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The kittens have now arrived and have been settling in for a few days now  Here’s the room all set up:   We’ve since added more boxes, and will probably be shuffling some stuff around. In the next few days we’ll start letting them explore other parts of the house, which means I have a lot of tidying to do and should also buy some mounting putty for the breakable pretty things we have around the house. Overall it is very beige room and I hope that one day it is less beige. I do want to move that wardrobe to a different room because I don’t want the linens smelling like kitty litter, and it’s also in the ideal spot for the cat tree. And with it gone I can vacuum better. If the carpet ends up being annoying/a huge allergen reservoir/smelly I’ll go ahead and pull it up and just have the ugly beater floor exposed for a while. The reason the carpet is still there and not replaced with hardwood is because the bay window is sagging quite a bit. Would want it to be fixed/rebuilt and have the whole floor be level before investing in expensive new flooring. Anyhow, here are some kitten pics:       I was worried about them being huge distractions from house projects but so far they’ve had the opposite effect. I find myself fixing/planning to fix stuff because I want the house to be safe and welcoming for them. Work, on the other hand? Very much a distraction.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:29
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This is a pro-update
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Aug 28, 2020 20:32
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Kitty updates are the best updates.😻
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Aug 28, 2020 21:12
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Oh my god, they’re so beautiful!
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Aug 29, 2020 01:15
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Welp once again I break my promise to myself to keep up with this thread better and use it to hold myself accountable for fixing this stupid house. Plague has been a bitch for motivation though. Anyhow, an update: A few days ago, we got a leak:  A slow drip starts coming out of a hairline crack in the ceiling in the den all of a sudden. The cats found it first - we peek in and they’re both sitting still staring at this one particular spot on the floor. Naturally, the leak is happening right above our new TV and the rest of our entertainment electronics:  And just tonight, a new leaky spot has opened up directly above the huge pile of cords behind the console, complete with bulge in the latex paint at the top of the wall. Didn’t feel like going back and taking more pictures. Circuit with the electronics now shut off, but that’s also taken out our bedside lamps and phone chargers. Luckily we can remedy with an extension cord to another outlet in the room that’s on a different circuit. Roofer has been called, but has not been able to come by due to weather and road conditions, which are bitterly cold and icy and bad, especially if you live at the bottom of a hill, like the roofer does. Guess we will need to update him on the deteriorating condition. We suspect an ice dam in the gutter and/or possibly water intrusion via stone facade or trim work. The roof is not very old (nine years old or so) and is in good condition, so it’s a less a likely culprit, and the room where the leak is is below the roofline anyway. While the roofer is here we can tell him about all the other metastasizing roof/gutter/water problems we’ve been having (he mainly does roofing but also general remodeling), like the rotted soffit on the back porch and the squirrel squatting in it, and some intrusion in the foyer, which is making the paint bubble pretty badly, but is easy to hide behind a coatrack which makes it too easy to just not think about. My husband has been pretty strung out about the house springing a leak but I’ve been all nonchalant about it, probably because I grew up in a house that was so leaky there were garbage bags stapled to the ceiling so one proper leak in two years isn’t that bad. I’m thinking the leak in the den finally revealed itself because of the sustained cold and dry weather shrinking the timbers and opening up new cracks or whatever. I’ve had a cutting board crack, and we’ve been having some trouble latching doors, which leads me to the next story: One of the doors that has the highest rate of latching failure is to the kitten room, which makes it very easy for them to escape at night and come harass us.  Seamus guarding doorknobs and/or pretending to be a doorstop. One is the problems aside from shrinkage is the drat crystal doorknobs someone installed probably mid-century that don’t fit right. The shafts seem to be designed to work with both bored cylinder lock sets more than mortise, and in practice work very poorly with mortise and fail to turn the latch, get stuck, slip, etc. We’ve already replaced half of them with period doorknobs and shafts picked up at the salvage place (kicking myself for not just paying more for the ones not slathered in forty layers of paint). It’s amazing how just putting in a doorknob that fits right makes the door work like new all of a sudden. We’ve replaced them as they get unbearable, but in retrospect probably should have replaced them in one go. Anyhow, we have a boneyard of doorknobs and other door parts lying around.  So that first replacement knob set sucked, so I went and got more knobs and parts from the boneyard. Was happy to find and unpainted one. Once the knobs were replaced, the latch operated much more cleanly and reliably. However, it didn’t solve the other half of the problem, which was the latch only barely grazing the strike plate and still being way too easy for the kittens to open. Shrinkage sucks. Anyhow, my solution was to add a shim under the strike plate so the latch could meet it. So I unscrew the strike plate. I sincerely regret not taking a picture, because what do I find? More shims! Glued in haphazardly at different times, probably to solve the same problem. I fashion a couple new shims from cardboard (sorry guys I think I am becoming a Previous Owner, but I didn’t have any other appropriate material, didn’t want to drive through the ice to get appropriate material, and also didn’t want to bust out woodworking tools and make a mess). Door latches great now. Oh yeah this happened a while ago to the downstairs closet door and I still need to fix it:  I just need some glue I think. And here are bonus catte pics:   
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Feb 16, 2021 05:08
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I have terrible luck with doorknobs, specifically getting spindles that fit. It always seems to end up with me sticking a little piece of something between the spindle halves as a shim so the knob doesn't pull off at the worst moment.
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Feb 16, 2021 08:47
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I have terrible luck with doorknobs, specifically getting spindles that fit. It always seems to end up with me sticking a little piece of something between the spindle halves as a shim so the knob doesn't pull off at the worst moment. What kind of hardware do you have? I have bog standard 100+ year old mortises and they only work with the old style non threaded spindle (the word I was looking for, not shaft) with the little screw holes for mounting the knobs. The spindles/knobs I’ve had trouble with are threaded with screw-on knobs (which have the little bracing screws but they never seem to hold for long). House of Antique Hardware has a variety of spindles, but none exactly match the type that works well for me (which are the genuine old ones that the salvage place salvages from dead Victorians). As for the doorknob that up and fell off, that wasn’t a spindle issue, just the glue failing after a hundred or more years. I’ve also seen old ceramic knobs randomly shatter after being bonked against the wall or jerked one time too many. I can lay out some hardware and take pics if you want help identifying the spindles you need.
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Feb 16, 2021 19:19
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Sooo if this roofer does could work could I get his info 
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Feb 16, 2021 21:57
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the yeti posted:Sooo if this roofer does could work could I get his info For sure. We got word-of-mouth referrals from friends. His office/base of operation is right near us but he lives in your neck of the woods. And even though we had to rain check the first time due to bad roads, he’s otherwise been very accessible and responsive. He’s supposed to be coming by tomorrow morning to check things out.
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Feb 16, 2021 22:11
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Queen Victorian posted:What kind of hardware do you have? I have bog standard 100+ year old mortises and they only work with the old style non threaded spindle (the word I was looking for, not shaft) with the little screw holes for mounting the knobs. The spindles/knobs I’ve had trouble with are threaded with screw-on knobs (which have the little bracing screws but they never seem to hold for long). The exterior doors are lever on the outside and knob on the inside (that knob maybe being me), so they have the split spindles (one straight, one hooked) with knobs you screw on and then set with a screw that inevitably is of non-standard diameter and pitch. I think I just need to be less lazy and actually measure the spindle length to order a shorter and fatter set, or cut the length down on what I have and continue to shim in between the halves so the knob doesn't slip off and the hooked spindle doesn't pull out. Speaking of which, we got the doors refinished, fixing the half-assed job from when we got the house painted over the summer. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  
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Feb 17, 2021 08:50
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tetrapyloctomy posted:The exterior doors are lever on the outside and knob on the inside (that knob maybe being me), so they have the split spindles (one straight, one hooked) with knobs you screw on and then set with a screw that inevitably is of non-standard diameter and pitch. I think I just need to be less lazy and actually measure the spindle length to order a shorter and fatter set, or cut the length down on what I have and continue to shim in between the halves so the knob doesn't slip off and the hooked spindle doesn't pull out. Those are nice looking doors with pretty hardware! I’ve always loved red doors and that type of door handle. My parents have really similar hardware on their front door. Don’t think I’m qualified to give spindle advice on exterior doors though (since home security and poo poo is concerned). Might want to ask a locksmith. We have a motley selection of exterior door hardware - original stuff plus additional (somewhat unattractive) deadbolts and latches added later. Not as bad as our apartment, where the landlord kept adding deadbolts and poo poo as the building settled and old ones got misaligned. loving place had six different keys. Here’s our (still matching!) front door hardware, outer and inner front doors, respectively:   Needs some serious cleaning and polishing, but it’s a sweet-rear end art nouveau design, which is I think the only place there’s an art nouveau motif (possible it was in the stained glass but the stained glass is long gone). The rest of the house otherwise leans Eastlake, which is an interesting and most likely unintentional contrast (because this house was definitely assembled from catalog parts).  Pocket door hardware after I FINALLY got the latch freed from its latex paint prison.  Face plate for half-spindle closet door hardware. No one ever sees this little plate, yet it is decorated and beautiful because that’s just how Victorian aesthetic was (we also have some gorgeous exterior work on the sides of the house that no one sees that’s there just because). This hardware will have to be swapped out for something with two knobs once we get to the point of having small children playing hide and seek and/or stuffing each other in closets. Re: roof: Roofer came this morning and patched up the leaky spot in the roof. Issue was a piece of liner where the dormer attached to the main part of the roof that was not properly mounted, so when it got super cold for a prolonged period, it shrank and pulled back enough to expose a spot for water to get in. Roofer reattached the liner and added additional liner for good measure. For the soffit issue on the back porch, he’ll be back after he gets his hands on some scarce and overpriced lumber. As for the water intrusion issue in the foyer, that’s caused by the combination of a gutter routing issue that inundates that corner of the facade when it rains hard and ices up when it snows, and a cracked downspout that needs replacing (bums me out because it’s an old-timey fluted one and I’m not sure you can get those easily anymore ).Yeti, I’ll send you a PM.
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Feb 24, 2021 18:51
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poo poo got fixed today! New downspout/gutter hookups and new soffit on the back porch. I was a dumdum and didn’t take pics before it got dark so I’ll try to remember to do that tomorrow or maybe this weekend. I did get a pic of a section of the old downspout though:  It was a big old metal fluted thing that had split all the way down the side but facing the stonework so we couldn’t see it (also on the side of the house that doesn’t have an alley so we never go behind it), and it was completely clogged (and clogged so long that all the leaves had turned to straight up dirt), so whenever it rained hard water would come down, hit the clog, and all spray out the crack onto the stonework. And since it is porous sandstone, water intrusion happens:  This has been building up very slowly since we bought the house. Initially, there was nothing there, and it started bubbling little by little and we spent a lot of time ignoring/not noticing it because it was behind a coatrack and never got wet enough at a given time to do anything to the floor, and then didn’t want to go about fixing it because we hadn’t fixed the source of the issue. Since we got the kittens I’ve knocked off loose bits and shopvacced periodically. I’m not sure if it was already a problem and the PO just had it cleaned up and painted over when putting the house on the market or if the downspout split and started spraying water directly at the stones at some point after we moved in. Our guy said that our type of gutter guard was really good (LeafFilter) and with the new downspout we shouldn’t have any further issues with the water intrusion, which means repair time. I figured I’d use this opportunity to try my hand at plaster repair, seeing as I basically have a degree in applying Bondo to various materials and then sanding a lot. If my workmanship sucks it won’t matter because we’re probably going to wallpaper the foyer  after doing other various restoration work in it (like stripping paint). I just want to clean it up for the time being.Also, with some of the construction defect discussions that have popped up lately and thinking about the EIFS lawsuits in PA, I’m really glad that we have a porous breathable house and that the result of exterior water intrusion was it escaping and seeping out inside. Sucks and wrecked the paint and whatever, but I’d take that any day over water that goes in but never comes out and silently and insidiously rots your entire house.
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Mar 4, 2021 07:26
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Ay caramba! Good luck with that repair!
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Apr 2, 2021 13:45
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peanut posted:Ay caramba! Good luck with that repair! Lol I’m still procrastinating on fixing it. We put the coatrack back and it’s hiding once again. I swear I’ll fix it. I get the sense that efflorescence generally looks way worse than it is - it’s just salts and minerals which form the puffy crystalline structures after having been pulled out from the stone/plaster by excessive moisture, so now that the downspout is fixed and no longer perpetuating water intrusion, I can scrape it off and repaint. It’s just a matter of actually getting started. In other news, weather had been really nice and was finally getting used to it being spring but then April Fool’s Day brought a bout of bitterly cold temperatures and snow, so I guess spring was a joke. Anyhow it was cold enough that we wrapped up our cherry tree to hopefully save all the blossom buds because the nighttime temp went down below the threshold that would kill blossoms at their current state of development (21 F). I’ll probably go post more about garden stuff in the horticulture thread because I’m now addicted to trees and would like to buy more this year even though I bought five last year and our yard really isn’t that big.
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Apr 2, 2021 20:46
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Big update: I bought a pickup truck! I've always wanted one because they make doing house poo poo way easier and I come from a truck-having family so I grew up with one available and really didn't like not having one, and renting one from Uhaul is an annoying pain in the rear end extra step to perform the simple task of fetching/moving a large and/or long thing that doesn't fit in a relatively compact sedan. Also this makes us a two-car household, which is super convenient, especially since things are opening up again and we actually have places to go and things to do. Still need to go back to the dealer to install a bed liner (probably next weekend), so until then, no heavy duty work/transport (we have a family friend who is against bed liners for some reason and the beds of their trucks get all dinged up really fast and look like complete poo poo and I don't want that). So yeah, looking forward to being able to do house stuff without the "oh no how will I transport this" barrier.
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Jul 4, 2021 18:19
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Is it a period correct truck?  
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Jul 5, 2021 09:54
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Heh, no. It's a brand new F-150 and it's awesome  I've never actually owned my own vehicle before so it's extra exciting. Also when securing financing, everyone I talked to during the process got super psyched and/or jealous when I mentioned the vehicle was an F-150. One thing that I noticed was that the way they usually phrased the asking about the vehicle was "do you have a type/model of car in mind?" which leads me to wonder if people run off to get auto financing before deciding which car they want to buy.  Another thing was that I had no clue how bad/weird the inventory situation is with new cars. When I was searching local dealership inventory, results came back showing each dealership having between zero and two trucks in stock that met my not very specific requirements. And then once we got there we haggled them down to selling me the truck at a slight loss - turns out dealerships have been buying vehicles from each other in order to get their hands on inventory, which has obliterated the usual commission-based pay for the salespeople and has them making their paycheck via sales volume and perfect scores on customer satisfaction surveys. It's already come in handy - a week or so ago we lent a friend our pole saw. Yesterday, we went to that friend's place for his 4th of July party in the truck and he returned the pole saw. I just plopped it in the bed. It sounds silly that this made me so happy, but in my husband's car, this would have involved folding the back seats forward, shoving the thing in through the trunk and having it right in our faces as we drove. Also with his car, we often ran into situations where the thing we needed to transport would technically be able to fit inside the car but would not fit through the back doors or trunk. Now we can buy things locally and can skip delivery/shipping. It's not like the having truck will pay for itself in shipping cost savings anytime soon, but it makes getting materials/supplies so much easier. Also now I can start trawling Craigslist for cheap Eastlake furniture/other antiques with the peace of mind of knowing that I don't have to deal with Uhaul if I find a piece I want. PS: really excited to go buy things like a pallet of rocks for flowerbed borders and fucktons of mortar and masonry tools and poo poo for the basement.
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Jul 5, 2021 20:35
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Understood and very jealous, enjoy your truck
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Jul 5, 2021 21:13
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So I kinda want an electric vehicle as my next car. F-150 Lightning would be great (once there's enough rapid charging infrastructure around), or I could get the period correct option: Turns out the (late) Victorian era had electric cars. Too bad gasoline power won and put us about ninety years behind in electric car tech.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:57
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Queen Victorian posted:PS: really excited to go buy things like a pallet of rocks for flowerbed borders and fucktons of mortar and masonry tools and poo poo for the basement. be careful about this, f-150s look big, but they really don't handle much weight before they bottom out. I picked up a load of just dirt once and it was pretty hairy.
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Jul 6, 2021 16:36
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Ghostnuke posted:be careful about this, f-150s look big, but they really don't handle much weight before they bottom out. I picked up a load of just dirt once and it was pretty hairy. Oh yes, definitely plan on paying attention to payload weights. My build (which has the 2.7l v6 eco boost) has a ~2,500lb bed capacity. I remember the time my dad picked up two giant pallets of flagstones and it pretty much bottomed out his beefy Silverado. I'm totally cool making multiple trips if necessary in the case of pallets of rocks. I also don't have any giant boats or horses to tow, which is good, because my build is not the one to buy for that. I'm predicting that the vast majority of cargo will be lumber and other non-rock building materials (for our DIY poo poo and also to supply our Amish contractor who is build-only and said up front that it'll be way cheaper for us if we procure materials for them) and then probably millwork and furniture.
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Jul 6, 2021 18:23
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Hey guys, sorry for being a boring lazy person and being poo poo at not only updating this thread but also actually doing things that would provide actual content for this thread. I think a lot of our hesitancy and paralysis comes from the general current situation with being able to get contractors and supply chain weirdness and also a good amount of pressure from my dad to just do everything we want to do in one huge insane renovation project. I mean, I see the merits of it - you can just get everything over with at once - but in the current climate doing it that seems impractical and prone to delays and logistical fuckups and cost overruns and stuff. I can't help but think it would be better to do one smaller project at a time and be able to better obtain and stockpile the necessary materials, schedule people, and keep poo poo within a manageable scope and cost. Then again one of my other worries is order of operations. There's plenty of stuff I could technically be doing, namely cosmetic repair like cleaning up the plaster walls (no I'm not going to replace with drywall even though it'll be way easier than stripping painted over wallpaper - I'm now too spoiled by the superior sound dampening) and stripping paint from millwork. But if I go ahead and do that, I'll have to have holes punched into the walls to replace the wiring. But if I replace the wiring now, then that means we'll have to either do an incomplete job now or retread later when we fix the kitchen and bathroom and add more bathrooms. And on adding bathrooms, we will have to finish a second bathroom before we can redo the main one (because there is only one bathroom). And on millwork and flooring, if we restore that now then we risk it getting messed up when we do heavier projects so maybe it would be better to wait until after those are done.  so many conundrums.... if feels like I'm always either waffling and being unproductive or getting ahead of myself.And speaking of getting ahead of myself, I had an inspired bathroom thought today. So we have a derelict Pittsburgh shitter in our murder basement:  As you can see, half the toilet is gone (those are the shattered remnants in the corner), and it looks like the plumbing has long since been disconnected from everything else (water line to the toilet tank seems to be a dead end). But it has a window and the stone could look pretty cool once it's cleaned up and repointed. My idea is to create a Fortress of Soliturd - just a chill, secluded place to go to if you know you're going to be a while. Also, since we also want to quasi-finish the basement laundry room, which connects to the stairs and also the bathroom (basement is divided into four rooms: boiler/storage, which is over half the square footage and connects to walkout entrance, bathroom, root cellar/murder room, and the laundry room). The laundry room contains the vintage triple basin laundry sink, water heater, and washer and dryer. The washer and dryer will be moving to the second floor, I'd like to restore the sink (which is beat to poo poo but still fully operational and extremely useful), build some cabinetry for pantry overflow with a space for our under-counter wine fridge (which is currently just sitting out), wine racks, and perhaps build a hutch around the water heater and clean up the ceiling/add beadboard covering. Basically, it would be nice enough for guests to see and access the bathroom. We do want a powder room on the main floor, but the only place to put it without completely loving up the layout is in the under-the-stairs hall closet. I'm honestly worried it's not big enough to be up to code. Also there's a significant slant which takes away headroom. And there's not much/any room to add sound insulation - we did a test in which my husband closed himself in and made realistic sound effects - you can hear everything. I admit to secretly hoping that we won't be able to make a bathroom under the stairs and we can keep the closet (because I'm not sure what we'd do without it, honestly), and just make a really nice guest bathroom in the basement. My husband doesn't want anything to do with the basement bathroom so this project would be all on me. So today I was thinking about redoing our main bathroom, and how we have this loving sweet Art Deco cast iron tub:   This tub is probably like 90 years old, but not original. It technically doesn't even fit in the bathroom - they added material to the doorframe and filed down the door to make the tub not overhang the doorway. As much as I love it, it doesn't work with the new layout we want, which involves putting an in-built tub at the end of the bathroom and putting a vanity where the tub is now. But I still want to keep the tub. So today I had the thought: what if we put a full bathroom in the basement? Move that wooden back wall out and make room for the tub. I can go whole hog Art Deco, but like vampire lounge Art Deco because it's underground and has stone walls, we can add a third full bathroom to the house's bathroom count and have it around for when any future children come inside and are excessively dirty and otherwise not worry about it being two whole floors away from living quarters. I just really want to keep that bathtub. Furthermore, the cost to hire piano movers or whoever to extract it and then send it off to be re-enameled (90 years of scratches, chips, and scuffing makes restoration necessary) looks like it's cheaper than buying a new cast iron tub. Is this idea crazy in a good way or a very stupid way?
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Sep 18, 2021 00:24
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Queen Victorian posted:Hey guys, sorry for being a boring lazy person and being poo poo at not only updating this thread but also actually doing things that would provide actual content for this thread. You'd be a fool to get rid of that tub! I'd imagine whoever you get to refinish the tub will be able to move it properly (but I have no real idea)
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Sep 18, 2021 00:55
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devicenull posted:You'd be a fool to get rid of that tub! I'd imagine whoever you get to refinish the tub will be able to move it properly (but I have no real idea) Open taking possession of the house, my first thought on the bathroom was "this bathroom is falling apart and needs to be completely redone - but the tub rules so it can stay" but then I realized the current bathroom layout sucks and it doesn't actually fit. Then I thought I'd "sell" it to someone in need of a vintage tub for the price of hauling it off or donate it to the architectural salvage place (I'm not sure they'd accept it because the enamel is far from perfect and there's some chipping, rust, and visible iron around the drain) - basically I just wanted to get it out in one piece and to someone who'd appreciate and use it for the next 90 years. I've seen/heard about too many tubs getting hacked apart for easier removal, which just seems incredibly wasteful. My mom's friend said that in her 20's bungalow, she remodeled the bathroom to be standing shower only and the workers sledgehammered the porcelain tub to extract it more easily, and my best friend got in a huge fight with her dad over the vintage clawfoot tub in his master suite - he wanted to redo the bathroom and ditch the clawfoot, but it had apparently been built in to the room (it was much older than the house), so getting it out in one piece would have involved removing some door casing and poo poo. He wanted to saw it up to get it out and that pissed off my friend. Also I saw a sawed in half bathtub on the lawn of a nearby multiunit this past spring - they were renovating one of the units. Consolation was that the tub was pretty ugly and looked like fiberglass. And not to mention countless online stories of clueless idiots who think cast iron tubs are shot forever if there's so much as a scratch on them and that they need to be replaced with some crappy acrylic/PVC imitation, or they refuse to embrace the colorful splendor of Art Deco and MCM bathrooms and replace all the high quality colored fixtures with cheap white boring crap. The final culmination of my thoughts on this tub happened when I was like, "why don't I just keep it?" Kinda want to do the same with the kitchen sink of a similar vintage - if it weren't a corner sink I'd make a case for re-enameling and putting in the new kitchen, but I'll settle for putting in the basement in potential workshop/canning kitchen space. Overall I think a full bath in the basement would be a good move long term - I don't foresee the bulk of the basement ever being fully finished, but figure a full bathroom down there keeps more options open (for use with a rough and tumble rec room space for kids, overflow bathroom space when a load of guests are in town, purely an excuse to keep the Art Deco tub, etc.
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Sep 18, 2021 06:54
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Having a basement bathroom because people come home dirty is why Pittsburgh shitters and Pittsburgh showers are a thing, after all. My Pittsburgh shitter is conveniently nestled between my furnace and hit water heater, under the stairs to the second floor. I affectionately refer to it as my Harry Potter toilet.
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Sep 18, 2021 07:12
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I'm having troubles keeping track sorry, could you quickly recap what rooms you have on each floor currently, and what you'd like to change that to?
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Sep 18, 2021 08:23
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I'm assuming the basement is taller than your proposed under the stairs bathroom, but with it being an unfinished basement in an older home, I'd still check height requirements for bathrooms in your city/county. Generally it's 6'8", and there are lots of old basements where that's gonna be a close call once you account for for framing/drywalling over whatever pipes and ducts were run wherever.
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Sep 18, 2021 13:28
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cakesmith handyman posted:I'm having troubles keeping track sorry, could you quickly recap what rooms you have on each floor currently, and what you'd like to change that to? I presume in terms of bathrooms? Basement: currently has a busted Pittsburgh shitter half bath. Had a crazy idea to turn this into a full bath using the Art Deco tub that is currently installed on the second floor bathroom (currently the only working bathroom) First/Main floor: Currently has foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, and closet under the stairs off the foyer. Would like to convert the closet under the stairs into a powder room. Second floor: Currently has four bedrooms (or three bedrooms plus a drawing/sewing room) and one full bathroom. We'd like to totally redo this bathroom because the layout is suboptimal and the tile work, which is original to the house, is starting to fall apart (want to keep the tiles and reuse them). There is also an awkward little changing room off the drawing room. It's about 5' x 8' and has two windows, which makes it a bit more difficult to work with. This is potentially a candidate for adding an additional bathroom to the second floor, but we've decided that this will be our laundry room. However, I'm considering adding enough hookups to convert to full bathroom down the line if we change our minds (washer and dryer can always go back to the basement). Third floor: currently has three bedrooms and four decent-sized closets, with one closet per room and an additional closet in the hallway. The hallway closet and one of the closets in one of the rooms back up next to each other, so here we want to close off the closet from the bedroom, tear out the wall between the closets, and make the combined closet space a cute tiny full bath with shower only, accessible from the hallway. In other houses we looked at, we saw whole third-floor bedrooms converted into sprawling spa-like bathrooms, but I hate those because they're too big and drafty, and you reduce your bedroom count. Overall, the bathroom additions and upstairs laundry room move are very low impact on the existing layout - we don't want to go around gutting and rearranging because aside from the lack of bathrooms, the layout of this house is very good. Furthermore, old houses like these tend to have a lot of immovable visual "anchors" to work with, like the bedroom fireplaces - once you start moving walls, your fireplaces and window alignment are all hosed up. Slugworth posted:I'm assuming the basement is taller than your proposed under the stairs bathroom, but with it being an unfinished basement in an older home, I'd still check height requirements for bathrooms in your city/county. Generally it's 6'8", and there are lots of old basements where that's gonna be a close call once you account for for framing/drywalling over whatever pipes and ducts were run wherever. I knew it was right around that so I went down and measured for real - floor to bottom of joists is 6'7", and to top of joists/subfloor it's 7'5" (joists are old growth 2x10s that are actually 2x10). So it's pretty borderline. But then again, it's technically remodeling an existing bathroom. For the ceiling I was thinking the 1/4" beadboard painted/finished to a dark color, or leaving joists mostly exposed (and dropping ceiling between them a few inches to hide wiring/lighting/fan) to pretend to have a taller ceiling (and of course, cleaning up the joists - they are gorgeous pieces of wood underneath the rough cut finish and century of grime). The closet under the stairs is all slant, starting at 9' and quickly descending to about 5'. Closet is plenty deep (5'?), but very narrow, only as wide as the door, which is 28' or 30' I think. It's just a cramped, awkward space.
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Sep 18, 2021 18:37
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Queen Victorian posted:There's plenty of stuff I could technically be doing, namely cosmetic repair like cleaning up the plaster walls (no I'm not going to replace with drywall even though it'll be way easier than stripping painted over wallpaper - I'm now too spoiled by the superior sound dampening) and stripping paint from millwork. But if I go ahead and do that, I'll have to have holes punched into the walls to replace the wiring. But if I replace the wiring now... Of course, thinking like this is why we have a 10x10 cube of moving boxes on the back porch under tarps and the fall rains started a month early. I think the basement bathroom is an admirable idea. Part of having an old house is recognizing that the spaces are quirky and you adapt to them instead of jackhammering them flat. You could put a really luxurious bathroom -- whatever your standards for that are -- in the basement because you have space to burn. My only concern would be damp; you'd want to put in solid ventilation even if that requires you to run ductwork across the ceiling to a side vent. But that way you get one awesome bathroom in the basement, one good bathroom upstairs, and a powder closet under the stairs. e: A beadboard ceiling painted white/cream and dark joists would fit into your mock-medieval theme nicely.
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Sep 18, 2021 18:55
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Queen Victorian posted:I presume in terms of bathrooms? Awesome thanks. The full art Deco bathroom in the basement sounds like a good solution, though it brings back memories of living in the attic of a student house and the only good shower being in the basement, 5 flights of stairs each way 
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Sep 19, 2021 09:13
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Goddammit was it seriously September when I last posted here? I need to post more so I can foist some accountability upon myself about trying to work on this house. Anyways, we got back from Christmas on the west coast with my family. It was a fun trip but there was much misfortune: - Despite successfully dodging Omicron, both me and my husband (and a couple other members of my family) caught the flu. Ugh, wrong pandemic influenza you rear end in a top hat. It was really bad and knocked me on my rear end for three days and I'm still recovering. Seems that I had it worse than my friends and coworkers with Omicron. - Sprained my foot pretty bad and have been hobbling around in a boot for the last couple weeks. - Return flight got canceled, adding three days to our time away. Just as well because I honestly wasn't fit to travel on the day of our originally scheduled flight. Felt like a monster knowing we were flying while sick (even though it wasn't covid it still sucked a lot), but then remembered that in the before times everyone pulled that poo poo all the time and without masks. - Got home at 1 AM to no hot water. So yeah, still dealing with that. The water heater is a 23-year-old piece of poo poo. Initially we figured the pilot light had gotten blown out (happens from time to time because of drafts or whatever), but it wouldn't stay lit. Turned out to be a bad thermocouple, so my husband replaced it today and the pilot light stayed on but then he did the soapy water gas leak test on the connections he reattached (had to remove the whole burner assembly to replace the thermocouple) and there was a leak and couldn't get the fitting tight enough before trashing the nut. Not sure it wasn't slowly leaking the entire time before. At that point it was beyond our fixing and my husband didn't want to risk running it with the leak (normally I wouldn't either but I really wanted a hot shower). Hopefully the plumber can come tomorrow. And hopefully he can fix it, because if we have to replace it I'm going to lose a bet with my dad (because his 25-year-old water heater hasn't died yet and he bet me his would last longer than mine). Also can't even run a bath with water heated on the stove because the tub drain is stopped dead. It was merely slow when we left, so I'm thinking running a bunch of cold water (yeah I felt THAT dirty from being on a plane and in airports all day) solidified any soap scum stuck in the pipes (which I'm sure look like clogged arteries on the inside, given that we have to snake them like once a month). Anyways, I have some more fun stories to come (including about the (re)construction of my childhood home - we found the home video my uncle made of the construction process and it's fascinating. Technically only tangentially related, but my dad was able to comment a lot on his whole design and planning process so there are plenty of relevant lessons and insights). Also I realized some of the last posts I meant to respond to and didn't. I'll try to do that tomorrow - it is very late.
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Jan 9, 2022 06:53
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Sockser posted:Having a basement bathroom because people come home dirty is why Pittsburgh shitters and Pittsburgh showers are a thing, after all. Yep, I loved it when I still worked in the kitchen, laundry and the Pittsburgh shower were right next to each other down the stairs from the side door, so I could come in from work, pitch my whites in the washer, and catch a shower before exposing the rest of the humans to my grease-stinking self.
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Jan 11, 2022 06:36
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Finally, stuff might actually start happening. Went to a small home reno convention last weekend with some friends. Seemed to be dominated by HVAC, basement waterproofing, and windows, which was well and good because those were exactly our interests, respectively. I had the opportunity to ask the HVAC companies about high velocity AC, which had one guy I asked be like  so, uh, that boded well. Then I found one of the very few local outfits that actually installs these systems and got a consultation. That happened this afternoon and my husband is on board and also it'll be really loving expensive and quite labor intensive to install m, but at the end of the day worth it, both for our comfort and improving the house. And with all this inflation bullshit and continued supply chain problems, probably wise to knock it out now rather than wait for prices to keep going up.We did discuss some of the other options, namely mini-splits and those on-floor radiator-like units. Even though a mini-split would probably be substantially cheaper and faster to install (high velocity system will take at least two weeks to install), we'd need several of them to work with the size/layout of our house, and then we'd have those big plastic wall units everywhere cramping my style. So the high velocity system is the go-to way to install true central air, and it'd be way less obtrusive because it's just tiny pipe holes in the corner of floors or ceilings plus a single large return in the third floor ceiling. An interesting thing about it is that it only needs the one return because it works by moving heat rather than exchanging air in a ducted system. Or something like that. Need to read up on the physics of it again. It's supposed to be quite efficient, especially with a heat pump, which we will install because why the gently caress not - it could handle those awkward periods in spring and fall when the radiators are overkill and/or night and day temps are fluctuating a lot. But the radiators aren't going anywhere because they create the most pleasant, even, quiet, not-dry heat and it often gets too cold here in the winter for heat pump-only heat anyway. Seems I might have to upgrade our heat only Honeywell T87 for the sub-model with the heat/cool toggle, but more research is needed. Luckily old T87s seem to be plentiful on eBay (I know they still make them but I want a brass/gold one and the new ones are all white plastic). So, first step for us is to punch a hole in the third floor ceiling to see what's going on in the attic crawl space (where they'd put the unit). We need to get up there anyway to insulate it. There is no attic access, which is weird. (These are all very tall and pointy houses, so there's often plenty more attic space above the finished third floor). So we need to figure out if there was an attic access at one point that some idiot PO plastered over, or if there is not one and we need to create one. My secret dream is to find the missing kitchen doors up there (it has happened in Rehab Addict), but that's probably wishful thinking - PO sucked and probably dumped/sold them. And then any holes that get put in the walls/ceilings to install this system we can leave open until we also get the house rewired/add plumbing for the eventual new third floor bathroom. After that we can patch/repair/replace walls and be completely in the clear to actually start DIY cosmetic restoration work in all the rooms that aren't the kitchen or bathroom. Arsenic Lupin posted:My husband and I call these "sliding tile puzzles". If I want to do X, I'll have to have done Y, but then properly I should Z before Y... When you're dealing with a sliding tile puzzle, be sure to factor in what you most want done. Like, you may have to damage the wall twice if you put in millwork and wiring separately (making up an example) but maybe you need the wiring right now. Sometimes it's better to do two small tasks inefficiently, because you need one of them far more than you need the other. This is a very good way of thinking about things. I think we've been way too hung up on the kitchen and letting that cloud our other goals. I finally realized that if we go ahead and install the AC system and rewire, that opens up a LOT of projects that are unrelated to the kitchen that we can do ourselves (stripping woodwork, repairing plaster, painting, etc). And I have accepted that we will probably still need to do some things over again, like adjusting the recently rewired wiring in the kitchen when we start remodeling it. PS: We did successfully finish fixing the water heater. We paid a plumber like $85 to slightly tighten a nut and say it was good after we'd done the hard part of replacing the thermocouple. Still, better safe than sorry when it comes to potential gas leaks (even though I reeeeally wanted a hot shower).
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Feb 18, 2022 01:02
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Can you do a ducted split system if you're opening up the attic anyway? Unit and ducts in the attic to handle the second floor, and a basement setup to handle the first?
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Feb 18, 2022 16:29
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tetrapyloctomy posted:Can you do a ducted split system if you're opening up the attic anyway? Unit and ducts in the attic to handle the second floor, and a basement setup to handle the first? I think if we had a two story house instead of a three story house, a split ducted system would be a whole lot more feasible (and probably what we'd try to do). When I say attic, I mean the unfinished space above the (fully finished) third floor. The main challenge is reaching the middle second floor, and it's way easier (but still not easy) to shove 3" tubes down through existing walls than twice as much ~10" ducting. Because the high velocity system doesn't need to exchange the air, it doesn't need per-room returns and all the extra ducting that goes with it, so you don't need to put nearly as much stuff into the walls, and the stuff you do need to put into the walls is way smaller and less intrusive (and adding the tubing is still going to be pretty intrusive). I actually asked my dad a while back about retrofitting this house with ducted central air (neither of us were aware of the high velocity option at the time) and he said it was incredibly difficult to the point of being impossible if not part of a down-to-studs gut job (which we are very much not doing) and to not bother.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:40
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Ah, for some reason I thought I'd seen you say you lived in a two-story plus basement and attic. Yeah, three stories is rough. I wonder if you could do a ducted split system for the third and first floors, and a cartridge split or two on the second. (I really dislike high-velocity systems, admittedly only based on the few places with them we looked at in 2013 when we were housebuying. They were loud, the airflow was uncomfortable near the ducts, and the cooling felt very uneven.)
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Feb 18, 2022 20:28
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tetrapyloctomy posted:Ah, for some reason I thought I'd seen you say you lived in a two-story plus basement and attic. Yeah, three stories is rough. I wonder if you could do a ducted split system for the third and first floors, and a cartridge split or two on the second. The noise and unevenness is what kept me from trying high velocity small duct systems in my own 132 year old house. It had some ducts and a horrible mid-efficiency forced air furnace. Even though I eventually went through with down-to-the studs reno (actually down to the no-studs), I still opted to remove the ducts and go radiant floor in new addition areas and radiators in the original section.
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Feb 19, 2022 13:49
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I'm aware of the noise - is it that much worse than a window unit? As for unevenness, central air of any evenness seems like it'd be an improvement over two window units for the entire house. We'd be upgrading to central air from basically nothing. And honestly, if it was up to just me, the system I'd install would be box fans and more porch time. It's funny because I don't actually like AC. I grew up in the fog belt in NorCal where AC was exceedingly rare, so I got used to inside and outside temps during not-winter being roughly the same, and as a result, I find huge temp differences between indoors and outdoors extremely uncomfortable. Furthermore, this house stays surprisingly cool as it is and it's not critically necessary for us to run the AC all the time to stay comfortable. First floor is fine and really doesn't need much of anything in the way of cooling, second floor is usually fine, with the third floor being the sacrifice that takes on all the heat rising from the rest of the house. With our window units, we'll run the one in the bedroom in the evening and overnight as needed and my husband will run the one in his office/man roost on the third floor when he's up there. I'm imagining that this will be something that we run as needed mostly in July and August. I dunno, I'm thinking noise and blowing for a fraction of the year is preferable (to me and my weird sensibilities, at least) to having big unsightly wall or floor units being there year round (even though they're super quiet and less blowy...). A big (maybe too big) part my of gripe with the other options is having to add big obtrusive units. If we only wanted to cool the third floor, mini split units would be fine, on the second floor, borderline, and on the first floor, unacceptable. Now if they made sweet old timey units out of brass in Victorian/Art Deco styling, like in the same vein as fancy radiators, I might be making a different choice. mr.belowaverage posted:The noise and unevenness is what kept me from trying high velocity small duct systems in my own 132 year old house. It had some ducts and a horrible mid-efficiency forced air furnace. Even though I eventually went through with down-to-the studs reno (actually down to the no-studs), I still opted to remove the ducts and go radiant floor in new addition areas and radiators in the original section. Excellent choice to go radiant - after having lived with hot water radiators, I cannot go back to forced air heating. Whenever I'm at my parents' house, I get woken up in the middle of the night when the forced air heat kicks on/off and the temperature shifts. The radiant heat is so even and comfortable - you get spoiled to the perfectly constant temp really quickly. Also doesn't blow dust around or dry the air out. Oh, I will clarify that our radiators will not be going anywhere (ever), and the high velocity will only really be used for AC. Heat pump got brought up as an energy-saver thing for giving us a tad of heat for those times when it gets a bit too chilly in the fall before we turn radiators on/in the spring after we turn them off. Honestly seems like a way inferior option for a primary heating system. Since you removed the ducting, what did you end up doing for AC (if anything)?
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Feb 20, 2022 06:12
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Queen Victorian posted:Now if they made sweet old timey units out of brass in Victorian/Art Deco styling, like in the same vein as fancy radiators, I might be making a different choice. Time for some brass sheet and hot glue. Queen Victorian posted:Excellent choice to go radiant - after having lived with hot water radiators, I cannot go back to forced air heating. Whenever I'm at my parents' house, I get woken up in the middle of the night when the forced air heat kicks on/off and the temperature shifts. The radiant heat is so even and comfortable - you get spoiled to the perfectly constant temp really quickly. Also doesn't blow dust around or dry the air out. It's strange, as someone in a country which is almost entirely radiator heated, I've always found it quite uneven since it's heating up one area of a room first. They also tend to dry out the area purely on the basis that heating air will always make it (relatively) drier. Blown air heating must really suck to be that much worse in comparison.
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Feb 20, 2022 13:02
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Queen Victorian posted:Since you removed the ducting, what did you end up doing for AC (if anything)? I have a pretty powerful window unit on the second floor I started using even before opening up walls. Because it’s not a huge house, and the double-brick adds a lot of thermal mass, it’s sufficient for keeping the whole house cool except for the longest heat waves. Even then, it’s keeps the bedroom cool, which is adequate for me. This being southern Ontario, both our winter cold and our summer heat is typically unbearable. Fans and porch sitting really only work for a month in early fall. Jaded Burnout posted:Time for some brass sheet and hot glue. quote:Blown air heating must really suck to be that much worse in comparison. It really does imo
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Feb 20, 2022 16:37
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