Bytown House - Our House Blog

Status, wow how time flies

2012-01-06T01:34:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted for a while. Life gets busy. I travel for work, have a family I want to spend quality time with, and we've been trying to be more prudent with funds, so the renovations have slowed down.

A very quick status report:
- we still have a large pit in the backyard
- we still have an unfinished back building although it is progressing, just slowly
- we have a new flat roof on the back building (modified bitumen, new roof drains, etc...)
- I've been slowly restoring our wood windows and storms
- we have a neighbour that corners our lot who's trying to develop a 19-unit condo building on a 100 x 130 lot
- we have a new neighbour beside us who is renovating their house (and making much more progress than us it seems)
- we still might have squirrels in our attic
- my post on making wood windows has had 19,000 hits

I've started a tumblr blog so I can at the very least post some photos that I don't have time to blog about here. You can check it out here: http://bytownhouse.tumblr.com

Demolition Complete (for now)

2010-08-18T13:17:00.001-04:00

The demolition crew finished the last part of their work for this portion of the project. We had a concrete demolition company come in to break up the slab under the old coach house. Here is a picture that gives you an idea of how thick the slab was:

They had a large bobcat with a air pressure jack hammer on it and an additional bulldozer to take away all the chunks of concrete. My son was very happy with all the ‘diggers’ that came to visit our house:

Here are a couple more pictures of the end result. You can see the open web steel joists supporting the flat roof. The plan is to pour a concrete footing along the length of the open wall and then reframe it as an external wall. In the second picture you can see the bathroom area that they jack hammered out while they were here. The bathroom will be roughed-in at the same time so we can pour a new floor when the footing is poured.

We had a first inspection with the city today. The inspector was very friendly and liked everything he saw today. He raised a couple small points relating to future parts of our project, but gave us the go-ahead to prepare to pour the footing. The footing has to have rebar in it that is drilled into the left-over foundation from the coach house. The inspector will return just prior to pouring, and then again before we backfill our new backyard ‘pit’ to examine frost-proofing that has to be in place around the footing.

More next week once our contractor has prepped the footing and had the plumbing roughed-in for the updated bathroom.

Demolition Progress!

2010-08-15T17:11:00.001-04:00

The demolition of the coach house started about a week ago. Here’s a picture of our first floor showing where the coach house was (red box). The entire building (2 storeys) was removed and all that remains is the concrete pad it was sitting on. The orange box in the picture was where our fire escape was. That was removed also.

In the pictures that follow you can see the various stages of demolition.

In this first picture, taken from my third floor office, you can see the roof of the building. They’ve just started to take off the roof covering.

Now they’ve removed most of the roof.

The inside first floor of the coach house. The light streaming through the roof rafters above.

Roof/second level gone!

Here you can see the bathroom that was built on the side of our current laundry room. It was very poorly built to accommodate the school’s first female student, probably in the 1970’s when the back buildings were used as an electronics college.

In this picture, you can see the crew’s first big surprise. You are looking head-on towards a 2 foot tall, 28 foot long steel I-beam! The crew said that it was likely put in place by a crane. This was done in the 1940’s when the original coach house was expanded to twice it’s size and this beam supported the entire centre of the building.

Here’s another picture of the beam running through the top of the first floor.

The demo crew cut all the ceiling joists on either side of the beam, as they were preparing to drop it to the ground.

They cut a small notch out of the supporting wood studs under the beam, then tied a chain around the base of the studs and their large truck, then dropped the beam down. When it dropped, all the car alarms in the neighbourhood went off!

The beam down on one side from above.

In this picture, taken from the farthest corner of where the coach house was standing looking back towards our house, you can see the fire escape that was remove, the remaining interior stud wall that connected the coach house to the other outbuildings, our two level enclosed sunroom/laundry room, and the steel I-beam lying on the ground waiting to be removed.

Here’s a similar picture after the outside walls were removed and the first escape was (mostly) taken down. My son has decided he wants a career in demolition. (Don’t worry, he was very well supervised).

In this picture, you can see the internal stud wall removed. You might wonder how we can have a 28' long opening with no support (or maybe you don’t care, but I’ll tell you about it anyway). The ceiling joists in the remaining structure run back to front and are open steel-web joists 16” high. The architect and structural engineer were very pleased to see this as they will allow us to have large open spaces in the interior, and an upper level deck with no additional support. Yey!

A picture of the back part of the open space, where the old furnace closet was. This is now gone too. You can see a bit more detail of the steel joists here with the dismal old fibreglass insulation. You can also see how the outer walls of the remaining structure were built. They consist of an 8” concrete block, an air space (filled in some places by newspaper), and then an inner 4” concrete block.

The latest surprise came on Friday when the concrete demo crew started breaking up the old pad. Most concrete pads are 4” thick, sometimes 6”. I had previously sledge-hammered a small hole to around 6” thick so we knew ours was on the thick side. Imagine their surprise when they broke up a section to find it is 14-16” thick!! It appears to be two pads, one poured on top of the other with a tar impregnated membrane between the two. My guess is that the original coach house had the first pad poured sometime in the 1920-1930’s. When the coach house was expanded and the the other flat-roof structure was built, the second pad was poured. The concrete demo guys said they needed a better bobcat to break up the pad as the one they started with wasn’t going to do the job right. So they left and dropped another one off this weekend and will be returning on Monday.

In case you were wondering, in place of the coach house, we will eventually have a yard with gardens and a patio. I still haven’t scanned our set of plans (they are on large format paper that it not easy to scan) to show you the rest of the planned renovation. That will come soon! If you look at the picture at the very top of this post, the basic plan is to have the remaining two rooms become a garage (the one in line with the side of the house), and a recreation room / in-law suite (the one in line with the current laundry room). We’ll be adding a roof top deck on part of the rear building with French door access from our upper sunroom and stairs down to a lower deck on the side of our current laundry room. Current laundry room will be restructured and opened to existing kitchen and will become part of the kitchen (an eating area). Doorway into old attached bathroom will become a door out to the lower level deck. The side of the rear recreation room now facing our backyard will have a 13.5’ long, 8’ tall, folding-sliding door to the backyard, allowing us to have an indoor/outdoor space with tons of light.

The city inspector will be coming by early this week to check on demo progress, while the crew removes the rest of the pad and our contractor starts to put a new external wall (with frost-protected footing beneath) on the remaining building. Then we’ll get going with the gutting of the interior of the remaining buildings. Fun times!

Building Plans/Permit Approved

2010-08-02T13:57:00.001-04:00

It’s been a long process, but we’ve finally got a set of finished drawings, engineering specs, and a building permit from the city for our plans to the back outbuildings. The demolition of the original coach house will likely start this week, and parts of the framing/structural work will begin after that, then a new flat roof will be put on the remaining structure.

Here’s a summary of our plans…

If you remember (from older posts), we have two buildings at the rear of our property that take up our entire backyard. The first is a two-level coach house that is (mostly) original to the house. It measures 30’x24’. The other, newer structure (1940’s) was built by Carleton College when they owned our house and used it as the Student Union building and it is a double-concrete block walled, single level, flat-roof building that measures 30’x26’. That structure abuts the coach house and its two rooms and the one on the lower level of the coach house were used as classrooms and as a recreation hall by students.

We are removing the coach house in its entirety and leaving the flat single level structure. The remaining structure has two large rooms, a bathroom, and two small closets (one for a furnace and one for an industrial electrical panel). The two large rooms will mostly remain the same, but the one in line with our driveway will become a single-car garage with workshop at the rear, and the other one (inline with our current laundry/mud-room) will become a recreation room with 3-piece bathroom. One wall of this recreation room will have an 8’ tall x 15’ wide folding sliding door that will open to the new backyard where the coach house was standing. We will be putting a new flat roof on, and a big roof-top deck as well with stairs leading down to a small deck at ground level.

In addition to these changes, we are moving our laundry to the basement, relocating our mudroom into the front part of the recreation room, and opening our current laundry/mudroom full to our existing kitchen. We are also opening an 8’ section of wall between the kitchen and dining room to create a more open feel (keeping the look/feel of the traditional trim for that opening), and rebuilding part of the laundry area to accommodate some new windows, a door opening to the backyard area, and a more solid floor.

The project is quite large in scope, but we’re breaking it up into phases that are manageable in scope and cost. After demolishing the coach house, we will have the wall that used to be between the coach house and remaining building rebuilt to be an external wall and closed up with plywood until next year. The new roof will be put on this fall with a new roof drain. The interior of the remaining building will be gutted and if we have the time and budget, we will likely try to get the garage door put on. That will be it for this year.

Next year, we will do some more work on the garage and recreation room, and start rebuilding the structure for the laundry room. If there is time and budget available, we will then proceed with opening up the kitchen/laundry area, and kitchen/dining room area. Decking (both on top of the recreation room and at ground-level) will be done last, likely the following year.

I am in the process of scanning some of the design drawings and as soon as they are done I will be post them up here. We have decided not to give the project to one large design/build firm as the costs are just too high. We will be acting as the GC on the project with assistance from our architect when needed. We will hire people to do most of the demolition work, the roof, electrical and plumbing, and framing/structural work, and we will handle everything else (insulating, drywall, flooring, and finishing touches).

Stay tuned for more updates as this next exciting phase of our house project begins!

Bathroom Teasers

2010-06-01T16:31:00.001-04:00

Before:

A couple weeks ago (misc. stages of completion):

We now have the glass tub shield in, the end of the tub tiled, and various other features completed. I will post more shortly showing the entire room and in better lighting.

The tiles are all marble, the black inlay is granite (12x12 tiles that were taken to a water jet cutting place to be made into 0.5” strips).

Miscellaneous Pictures

2010-06-01T16:22:00.001-04:00

The sun was shining into our main floor the other day and I took a few pictures…

Butler’s Pantry

2010-06-01T16:07:00.001-04:00

Catching up on some old posts. Sorry, there will be a few posted in a row. I’ll try not to post in bursts in the future, but it is the prime season to be out actually doing renovations and not blogging about them…

Here are the before and after for our butler’s pantry:

Before (even before we moved in):

After:

We kept the old cabinets and sink. We are undecided as to whether this room will become a main floor powder room to so that the current powder room next to the kitchen (the one that was never put back together after the plumbers demolished it to update the plumbing) can be turned into a staircase to the basement, thus providing more room in our kitchen. But for now, we find this room very useful with the second sink and extra storage. We still have to put back up the crown moulding trim (when I get the chance).

Various Updates and Coming Soon…

2010-05-22T00:26:00.001-04:00

I haven’t posted in a while. Things get busy and with the nice weather, they got even busier.

A few updates:

Outbuildings - The architect is finalizing plans for our rear outbuildings. There were some questions regarding whether the existing buildings have a 4’ frost wall foundation or were just on on-grade footings. It looks like we’ve got 4’ frost walls, which is good news. He also has to visit the city to see if there are existing plans for them, and finalize some issues with the engineer. I hope to have final plans, including approved demolition and building permits in the next few weeks. I’ll post the plans once they’re approved.

Bathroom - Second floor bathroom is pretty much done. We finally finished all the tiling (most of it in 3”x6” marble subways). Just waiting on the glass tub screen, which should be installed early next week. Pictures coming…

House History – I posted an ad in the local community newspaper asking for alumni and former staff of Carleton College (now Carleton University) to contact me to help with my personal research project. Our house was owned by Carleton and used as their student union building from 1949 – 1958. I’m trying to gather more information on how it was used and when the rear outbuilding classrooms were built. I’ve spoken to two former staff (a librarian and a professor) and five former students. I know which rooms were used for council meetings and which room housed the student newspaper (my son’s current bedroom). I also know that the most popular activity was Bridge playing on the main floor, and that the basement was used for gambling (mostly poker)! I also have leads on a number of photos that depict our house during that time. More to come…

Sorry for the lack of photos. This post if more of a stub so I can fill in the details in future post. I hope to be back posting on a more regular basis. I have noticed that a lot of my favourite house blogs have been pretty slow lately too. I wonder if people are just too busy to blog, or are getting bored of it.

New fireplace is in

2010-01-25T15:23:00.001-05:00

What a busy winter this has been so far. Here are a few pictures of the before and after of our main floor fireplace. You can read previous posts for the background…

Before:

After the new hearth tile was put in (not grouted yet):

After (the flash doesn’t show the flames very well so I included a blurry one without the flash):

The pictures above show the fireplace with the gas logs installed. We had ordered coals instead of logs, but they were out of stock. They have since come back and switched them, but I haven’t taken any photos. Maybe later…

Fireplaces

2009-11-24T00:23:00.001-05:00

This post will be about fireplaces, but I thought I’d start with a quick update on things…

We finished the stucco work. We were very lucky to have some warm weather in the last few weeks and the mason who did the stucco work made good progress. We decided to not press our luck with painting the finished work (we’ll do that next year), but he did manage to fix all but 3 panels that were too difficult to reach without moving the scaffolding (which we didn’t have time for). I’ll post pics shortly.

We met with our architect who is helping to design our renovation to the rear school buildings. He came up with some good design ideas regarding our kitchen and how to open up some walls while keeping true to the historic elements of the house. We’re going through some revisions now, but when we are further along, I’ll post the plans (or a portion of them).

We also finally had the plumbers back to hook up three radiators that have been disconnected for a year. They managed to gouge one area of our dining room floor, leave a radiator leaking (it still is), rip one wall-mounted radiator off the wall, and come close to destroying another one by tightening the vent too tightly. Not a great experience.

Now, back to fireplaces. Our house originally had four fireplaces. Two coal inserts, and two electric fireplaces. That’s what we’re guessing. There was one remaining coal insert in the parlor, and one electric in the 2nd floor den. All that’s left of the other coal insert is the hearth tiles in the bedroom it was originally located in, and all that’s left of the living room electric is a very obvious patch in the hardwood floor which more or less matches our neighbour’s location of their electric fireplace.

Our eventual plan is to have five fireplaces when we’re all done our renovations. One in the parlor (existing), one in the den (existing), one in a 2nd floor bedroom (hearth remaining), one in the master bedroom suite on the 3rd floor (at least a few years away), and one in the rear building’s renovated area.

We had hoped the existing coal insert could be converted to wood and had mixed opinions from the W.E.T.T. certified inspectors we had come look at it. Well, after getting smoke coming out of the bedroom floor above the parlor, we’ve decided to forget about wood (it’s just too expensive to repair the 40’ of flue) and are now looking at gas models. Here is one we’re considering:

http://www.valorfireplaces.com/products/portrait_windsor.php

The styling is older that our house (more Victorian), but it’s the closest we’ve found that looks like our old coal insert. We are still looking into pricing and it won’t happen until at least January, since all the fireplace installers are booked until at least Christmas.

The electric fireplace in the den was wired with knob and tube and we can’t find bulbs for it so we’ve decided to replace it as well. We’ve been looking into electric and gel fireplaces and even ordered a cheap gel insert (from Costco!) that roughly fits the space, but after two fires with the gel fuel, we’re thinking electric. The gel fuel gave off a weird smell and both of us had head-aches the next day. Not ideal. Here’s the electric fireplace we’re considering:

http://www.valorfireplaces.com/media/Dimension09/classica_medium.jpg

This is the closest we could find that will fit and has a coal-bed and looks reasonably realistic.

If anybody has any suggestions/ideas for gas and/or electric fireplaces that look/fit the era of our house (c1914) I’d love to hear from you.

Scaffolding is up!

2009-10-26T00:33:00.001-04:00

I helped our mason erect the scaffolding. We ended up erecting enough to just reach the peak of the roof on the side dormer. In order to do the stucco work, we didn’t need to go that high, but there’s a loose piece of trim that some birds are getting access to our attic through, and I thought I might as well fix that at the same time. Here is a picture of the scaffolding.

We only needed 35 ft in height (7 sections). The scaffold is tied to the house in 8 different places, all with heavy gauge wire to bolts either screwed into wooden members or screwed into expanding lag nuts in between masonry. For extra support, we have some sand bags placed around the bottom (so it isn’t too top heavy). The structure barely moves when you’re at the top. The mason has a safety harness with lanyard and he has spent considerable time working from heights (rebuilding chimneys from above the roof line).

Here are a few pictures of our neighborhood taken from the top of the scaffolding.

The old Ottawa Women’s College (now a condo development):

Our roof (you can see the old and new portions) looking over to the United Church nearby:

A nice picture of the new portion of our roof:

A picture looking down onto our new standing seam metal roof over the side sun room:

The top peak that needs to be repaired to prevent birds from entering our attic (it’s worse than I thought):

Here are a couple pictures of the stucco that needs repairing:

Here’s a picture of a window sill that I repaired (see previous posts) using a wood epoxy and filler. You might notice that the storm is installed but the interior double-hung window is missing. It’s in my workshop awaiting repair. The sill is just primed for now, it will be repainted at a later date:

Here’s the other window sill that has been epoxied and filled, but not sanded or painted yet (it’s on the list). The storm for this window was just reglazed and is awaiting installation so I can remove the double-hung for additional repair:

Foundation (Before and After)

2009-10-24T21:38:00.001-04:00

As promised, here are a few pictures of the before and after of our foundation. The mason completed the foundation work last week. The before pictures were taken during our original home inspection.

A Project that we shouldn’t be starting so late in the season

2009-10-23T00:01:00.001-04:00

We found a guy who does masonry at a reasonable price (see previous post) who we hired to re-point our entire foundation. He completed that job earlier this week and in speaking with him during the work, we decided to get him to help replace/restore some of our stucco. We have a few sections that need replacing. One in particular is in really bad shape (a good chunk of it has actually fallen off the side of the house).

We really probably shouldn’t be doing stucco work now. The temperature is just holding above where we need it to be for it to cure properly. The mason has suggested tarping the area where he’ll be working and setting up a small heater inside the tarp. It really came down to price and the fact that he did a good job on our foundation (pictures will be forthcoming shortly on that job).

So, we decided to go for it, and are having enough scaffolding delivered tomorrow to put a platform up 10 ft wide x 40 ft high. We don’t really need to go 40 ft high, but that’s enough to reach the top peak of the roof where I want to close a hole that some birds are getting into. There’s a local company that rents scaffolding really cheaply and provides everything you need, including all the safety equipment. The mason is experienced with scaffold work, and I’ll be helping erect it since it’s a two-person job. Once we have the platform up where we need it, I’ll take some really scary pictures of our bad stucco.

In case you’re wondering, we’re going to use a traditional stucco based on the specifications from the Historic Preservations briefs. Here’s the link for the stucco brief: http://www.nps.gov/history/HPS/tps/briefs/brief22.htm. We’re going with the ‘Traditional Natural Hydraulic Lime Stucco’ which is 1 part hydrated lime, 2 parts white portland cement, and 3 parts mason’s sand. A local masonry supply place has hydrated lime (yey!) at only $6.50/bag. We’ll be applying a 3-coat application to new diamond lathe nailed to the house sheathing. We’ll wait to paint it until the spring.

In other house-related news, we took down a 25ft tall weed tree that was growing against a fence (I used an axe old-fashioned style), and we had a gas leak at our meter. I guess the diaphragm that is used to regulate the pressure was leaking. I smelled the gas when I went to chop down the tree. It was before the meter so we don’t have to pay for the leaking gas, but still a waste as we don’t go near that side of the house often so I have no idea how long it’s been leaking. When the gas company came out to investigate they realized our meter wasn’t moving (yey for us, free gas), so they changed that too, and told us they have to come back and dig up our gas connection as the end segment is crimped and not to code.

Posts to catch up on

2009-10-13T12:07:00.001-04:00

We’ve avoided doing any blog posts for 2.5 months. It’s not that we don’t want to; we’ve just been busy with life.

Things we’ve been up to:

re-glazing storm windows
rebuilding window sills
finishing the main family bathroom
getting insulation added to the attic
preparing to have some missing radiators connected
getting our foundation repointed
getting quotes for stucco repair
opening up our fireplace
planning for the rear school-building renovation next year

The storm windows are coming along. I’ve got about 10 of them in the back workshop almost ready to be installed. I’m waiting for the glazing compound to firm up a bit more so I can prime before putting them up. I still have 4 more storms to build from scratch but have been procrastinating buying the wood…

I’ve rebuilt two window sills up on our third floor. Most of sills are stone, but the ones that are in the roof gables are wooden and in bad shape. I used the products LiquidWood and WoodEpox. LiquidWood penetrates into rotten wood to waterproof and prevent further rot. WoodEpox is a putty. I was going to do a detailed post on this, but there are a lot of other people who have done just that ('tis the season for window repair), so I won’t bother.

The bathroom is coming along, but slowly. The tub is in now, we pretty much just have to tile. We haven’t bought the marble yet, but will soon. More to come on that soon-ish.

We had our attic insulated. We had about 1” of old cellulose insulation previously. The insulation guys came and added a lot more, so we are up to R-51. They also filled the knee-walls on the third floor, added more to the other walls (via the attic since our house is balloon framed), and did the ceiling in the sun-deck off the den. We’ll notice more of a difference once the really cold winter hits, but it seems warmer and less drafty already. They also built us a proper attic hatch so we don’t have a huge gaping hole in the closet.

The plumbers are coming next week to re-attach three radiators that we’ve had off since last winter and replace a pipe that looks very close to springing a leak due to rust. The rads are for the main family bathroom, one in the butler’s pantry, and one in the dining room. Two were removed due to having to demolish the walls around them when the plumbers did the replacement of galvanized supply piping. The one in the dining room was taken off because the flooring under it had to be replaced (it was rotten from a leak). It will be interesting to see what this winter will be like with those three working again. We found those areas too cold last year.

I found a guy on craigslist.org that was offering masonry services at ‘reasonable’ rates. We weren’t planning on having our foundation repointed this year due to the cost, but I figured I’d have him come out to give us a quote. His quote was 75% cheaper than the next best quote, so I hired him and had him do a small section first so I could inspect his work. He showed up with the correct mortar for the period of our house and his work was clean and well executed. He also offered to repair sections of our stucco with a traditional lime, portland cement, sand mixture, so we’re preparing to have him do that before the really cold weather hits.

We removed the coal insert from our fireplace to expose the firebox. We had installed a lock-top damper on the fireplace flue earlier this year (since we don’t have a damper or smoke shelf in the fireplace). We had conflicting opinions on whether the fireplace could be used. We had two WETT-certified fireplace professionals come in earlier this year. One of them said that they didn’t think we should use it because the flue didn’t look in good shape and then he tried to sell us an expensive gas insert. The second guy said it looked in good condition but suggested a smoke bomb test to verify that the smoke was well contained in the flue. We had some smoky smells in the bedroom above the fireplace when we had our first fire. We’ve decided to open up the closed fireplace in that room (it’s been closed off for many years) and do a complete smoke bomb test before using the parlor fireplace again. If it’s not completely safe, then we’ll have an insert put in and try for a wood fireplace on the second floor or in a future renovation somewhere else in the house.

This post is getting long, but I wanted to throw something in about our planned renovations for the rear school buildings. Our son is getting to the age where we want him to have a yard to play in. If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that the entire back of our property is filled with two large buildings. The total dimensions are 53’ wide x 30’ deep. So, we currently have no backyard. One of the buildings is the original 2-story coach house and is in a terrible state. The roof needs replacing and there is some mold in the wood framed walls. It’s damp and there are animals in the upper level (raccoons, squirrels). The other building is a single-story flat-roofed concrete ‘bunker’. It’s in pretty good shape, has its own bathroom and furnace (disconnected currently).

Our plan is to take down one of the structures at the back next spring so we can restore half our backyard. The other structure will stay and be converted into usable space. We will need a demolition permit from the city and permits to properly renovate the remaining building. So, we hired an architect to do plans for us and had a survey done of our property to make sure we didn’t need to apply for any variances. The survey went well, no variances, yey! And the architect is busy working on plans and coordinating with the city (which seems very supportive of our plans so far). I’ll refrain from posting our plans until we get city approval, which will hopefully come later this year or very early next year. Our plan is to apply for permits for the demolition, work on the remaining building, and some kitchen renovations all at the same time, with the expectation that we’ll just do the demo-work next spring and see how the budget goes on the remaining items. It’s easier to get all the approvals in place at once, and the city is ok with work being done slowly as long as there is some progress to report on every six months. With any luck, next spring (once the snow clears), we’ll have a sizeable yard to enjoy!

I’ll get some pictures up when I can. We’re in rush mode now until the snow hits, then I think things will slow down enough to sort through the photos and do some more detailed posts.

Making Windows… Part 2

2009-07-28T11:30:00.001-04:00

This is a continuation of my previous post. In this post, I will complete the window up to the point of dry-fitting. When we left off, we had four 25” long 2”x1 1/4” pieces of wood.

After cutting to size and marking which pieces were to be used for rails and which for stiles, the next step is to mark the tenons on the rails. When doing a mortise and tenon joint in a corner joint, such as a window or picture frame, it is important to cut an additional shoulder in the tenon. This is referred to as a haunched tenon. If you don’t do this, then the entire side of the tenon will be visible on the outside edge of the window, which reduces strength and looks bad.

Here are the haunched shoulders marked on the rails:

Now, we’ll setup the table saw for cutting the tenons. Here is my table saw with the supplied miter attachment:

We remove the miter attachment and put in my home-made t-groove track attachment:

This is a 28” x 8” 3/4” thick piece of MDF left over from a previous kitchen update. I plunge-routed the groove for the t-groove track and two bolts. The t-groove piece I bought from a local tool shop. Now we mount the tenon jig:

Here is a pic of the tenon jig showing how it holds your rails:

This would be an incredibly tricky cut to do without a jig. The jig has settings that allow you to align everything so you get precise shoulder cuts. Here are the rails with the shoulders cut:

You can see how poor my saw blade is. I need to get the new finishing blade on soon. Next we mount the rails back in the jig to cut the haunched shoulder:

Now, we remove the jig, and setup the blade to remove the shoulder material.

Typically, some clean-up will need to be done once the tenons are cut. You can use a rasp, wood file, or sharp chisel to clean up your edges. I will wait to do that until after my mortises are cut so that I don’t remove too much material.

Now, we’ll mark the mortises. You can assume your tenons are perfectly situated on the rails (not likely), or you can mark the mortises using the tenons (which I did). Here are the mortises marked:

Using the mortiser, I position the fence to accurately cut the mortise holes. The mortiser will make a 1/4” x 1/4” square hole each time it plunges, so you have to move the workpiece along until the mortise is cut. It’s a good idea to cut the two ends first with a scrap piece of wood beneath so that you avoid tear-out on the bottom with the through mortise. Then, you can plunge the in-between holes most of the way through, flip the work piece over and plunge from the other side. This gives a cleaner mortise. Here are the mortises:

Now, we do the first dry fit. None of the edges have been routed yet, but this will allow you to adjust your mortises and tenons slightly (chisel, file, rasp) to get a good fit. You want a tight, but not overly tight fit, because you want space for glue and the wood will expand with the glue. Here’s the test fit:

Here you can see one of the through tenons:

Now, we move onto routing the edges. We start by using the coping bit, which looks like:

You align the height so that the top of the bit is just touching your tenon, with the face side down. You then align the fence so that it will cut 1/4” into the wood, like so:

After routing the coping cut on all 4 ends of the rails, you mount the sticking bit, which looks like:

You align the bit so that the sticking cut will have the same reveal and the 1/4” part in the middle lines up with the coped rail edges. The fence aligns with the front of the bearing in the middle of the bit. You then route all four inside edges (face side down).

Once that’s done, you can do another dry-fit. You’ll note that the tenons come through further than the outside edge of the window. This is because of the 0.5” overlap with the cope and stick cuts on the edges. You can use a small saw or a table-saw (very carefully) to remove these. It’s better to have your tenons come out the side and trim them, then to have them too short.

Here is the assembled window:

Next up is doing minor tweaks to clean up where the pieces fit together, removing the excess wood from the tenons, then gluing, priming, and glazing. Some of our windows have pinned tenons, meaning that a piece of wood or nail is driven into one of the window frame faces through the tenon. This gives the joint even greater strength. I’m not sure if we’ll do this or not with these smaller storms.

I hope I haven’t bored too many of you. I struggled to find good instructions on the web for building the windows, and thought it might be useful for others if I tried to do a detailed step-by-step.

If you’re curious of the work effort involved, I spent 3-4 hours ripping the wood to the size I needed (I’m very slow when I have to use my table-saw without the guard), 2 hours doing the tenons, an hour to make the mortises, and another hour to do the routing of cope and stick cuts. So, 8 hours for one window. I think this time could be reduced by buying pre-milled wood in the basic thickness/width you need it, and doing more than one window at a time at each step, minimizing set-up and changing/aligning bits. I think the effort is worth it though. The end result is a strong, well-made window. The tools will pay for themselves very quickly as well, given the cost of replacement windows.

Making Windows… Part 1

2009-07-27T12:30:00.001-04:00

As I indicated in some previous posts, I’m making some wooden storm windows (and eventually some double-hung sashes) to replace those in our house that are either too far gone or missing.

Here’s a list of the tools I’m using: a table saw, a router mounted in a router table, a mortiser (similar to a drill press), a tenon-jig (for the table saw), and some specialized router bits for making windows.

My table saw is a pretty cheap model from Ryobi, which came with a removable miter attachment with a non-standard t-groove. The tenon-jig that I purchased requires a 3/4” t-groove, so I had to make my own table saw attachment to take the place of the original one. More on that in a later post.

Here are some pictures of my router table, with one of the special router bits installed for making the windows:

The bit as installed makes the ogee shape on the inside face of the window and the square groove on the other side for installing the glass (referred to as the ‘sticking cut’). You can reassemble the bit for making what is called the ‘coping cut’ which is the inverse of sticking cut for where the rails (top and bottom of the frame) of the window meet the stiles (left and right sides of the frame), or you can buy an extra bit that will do the same job so you don’t have to repeatedly take apart and reassemble the bit.

Here are some pictures of a simple test frame I made out of some scrap spruce 2x4s:

For a simple frame that doesn’t need to stand the test of time (like a picture frame, or small mirror, or something similar), this sort of construction would be sufficient, but the only thing holding it together would be the glue where the pieces fit together. This would not be strong enough for a full-sized window that has to withstand both the challenges of weather, temperature differential (inside of house vs. outside), and being continually opened and closed.

For a strong window that can deal with all of these conditions, you need a mortise and tenon joint (or something similar). There are other joinery methods that use dowels, biscuits, etc…, but one of the strongest joints is the traditional mortise and tenon. Those terms sound fancy, but they just refer to the hole (mortise) and the thing that goes in the hole (the tenon). There’s a really good reference on this type of joint here.

Here are some pictures of part of a test frame I built using a mortise and tenon:

There are several methods for making the tenon, including using hand-saws, a jig for a table-saw, or using router bits. I opted for a jig to assist with making the ‘shoulder-cuts’. Then you use the table saw without the jig to remove the rest of the material. I’m going to do a more detailed post on making tenons later on.

For making the mortises, you can use hand tools (a special chisel called a mortising chisel), or you can use a plunge router, or a dedicated mortising machine. The plunge router (or drill if you’re careful) don’t give you a nice square holes, so if you go with that option, you have to square the mortise, or round the tenon. A dedicated mortiser gives you the nice square holes and is the ideal option if you’re making a lot of mortises (which I’ll be doing).

Here’s some pictures of the mortiser:

A close-up of the bit:

The bit is actually two pieces, a hollow square chisel, and a drill bit that removes the material inside the chisel:

The bits come in standard sizes. The mortiser I bought came with 1/4”, 3/8” and 1/2”. I’m using 1/4” mortises for our storm windows.

Now that I’ve reviewed the tools involved, I’ll lead you through my first real attempt at making a small storm window that is 22 1/2” (height) by 21 1/4” width. It is a single-lite storm, so I don’t have to worry about muntins (I’ll do a post on those when I get further into making my windows).

I’m going to make this storm out of a spruce 2”x8” purchased from the local big box that I had lying around from another project. Normally, you would purchase good quality wood from a proper mill. My 2”x8” has some knots which you really want to avoid and it’s not the best quality wood. A lot of wood windows are made of spruce, pine, or cedar. Spruce and pine are fine for painted windows. You can also use Mahogany or other finer wood species if you are staining the windows instead of painting.

Here is my 2x8, cut into 2 25” pieces:

I used my table saw to rip the raw lumber into 2” wide pieces, trying to avoid the knots in the wood wherever possible. This gave me 4 2” x 1 1/2” pieces 25” long. My storm windows have to be 1 1/4” thick however. My interior windows are 1 3/4” thick, but the storms are a little thinner. So, I had to rip 1/4” off of each piece. This requires you to remove the guard on the table saw, which I hate doing, but I used protection for my eyes, stood to the side of the blade rather than right in front of it, and used push sticks to keep my fingers well away from the blade.

Here are the final pieces waiting to be cut to length:

To give your wood the nice clean, straight, square edges it should have, you would ideally use a jointer/planer. I don’t have one and have opted not to purchase one at this point. For this window I am using a cheap ripping saw blade, but I have purchased a better quality finishing saw blade that should reduce the appearance of saw blade marks. I may make a home-made jointer jig for my table saw as well depending on the results I get from the new blade when I get around to installing it.

Sizing the pieces for your frame is pretty simple. The stiles (left and right of your frame) are the full height of the window (they will have the mortises). So, they will be cut to 22 1/2” – 1/8” (you have to leave some room in the frame so the storm isn’t too tight), so 22 3/8”. The rails are the width of the window (21 1/4” – 1/8”, same reason as above), minus the width of the stiles (2” x 2), plus the length of the tenons (2” x 2, since I am doing through tenons, meaning they pass all the way through the stiles), plus a 1/2” for the coping cut (where the cope and stick routed edges overlap). So, the rails will be 21 5/8” in length.

I’ll end this post here. My next post will show how to make the tenons on the rails, and I’ll follow that with the mortises, routing the cope and stick cuts, and then moving on to dry-fit, gluing, and eventually painting and glazing.

Constructive Carpentry and Inside Finishing

2009-07-24T11:51:00.001-04:00

These are two titles of books published in 1912 by author Charles A. King. The books are two in a series of five meant to be used for students studying carpentry. The two “beginner” books prior to these advanced titles are ‘Elements of Woodwork’ and ‘Elements of Construction’. The fifth book is a handbook intended for teachers.

‘Constructive Carpentry’ deals with the fundamental construction techniques that a carpenter would use to construct a house. It outlines the basics regarding where to situate a house on a lot, foundations, damp proofing, brickwork, and chimneys, then discusses framing techniques (full, half, balloon). Then follows a lengthy discussion on how to use a steel square, with lots of mathematical formulas. There’s also a chapter on roof construction, boarding and outside finish, roof coverings, and plastering.

‘Inside Finishing’ is a treasure trove on detailing and interior finishes. There is a basic intro on heating systems in use in 1912, some discussion on plumbing and ice-boxes. Then comes a good chapter on floor laying and finishing that also discusses inside woodwork. A chapter on doors, then another on windows follows. Then comes stair building, which is a great chapter in my opinion as it discusses how to layout a stair design, headroom accommodation, stringers, posts, treads and risers, circular stairs, balusters and handrails.

A chapter on painting discusses how good quality paint contains lots of lead, which I found amusing and a bit scary.

The chapter on inside woodwork is great. It discusses how wainscoting is prepared, how moldings and casing should be built, and has an interesting discussion on the necessity of closets for storing clothing and linens away from insects and vermin.

Obviously the writing style and much of the content is out of date. There have been major advances in the areas of insulation, HVAC, plumbing, appliances, ventilation, etc… But, I found it interesting how much of the content is still very relevant. The hardwood floor discussions are pretty much inline with unfinished flooring techniques in use today. And the care given to how to install doors, windows, and casing are very relevant, especially given the careless construction techniques in new builds these days. Things like attention to the look of details, door opening height, and how to make the most of natural light are all topics that are often ignored in new homes.

I love the way the author and presumably carpenters of the day thought of the homes they built. Phrases like ‘seasoning of the building’ are used, which treats the house as something that matures rather than deteriorates. These people built homes to last generations and it shows in much of the detail in these books. The writing also elevates the role of a carpenter to that of one requiring a very high level of intellect, with knowledge of mathematics, layout, and design, and an integral understanding of how other trades impact and integrate with carpentry.

The books are also inline with the modern concept of buying stock items. Doors and windows in 1912 were not made by the house carpenter, but rather ordered as stock items or broken-down kits, and just assembled and ‘tweaked’ on-site. This mass-production technique differs from homes built before the 1870s where much of the materials were still hand-constructed.

Anyone who owns an old home or cares to read up on how old homes were constructed should read these books in my opinion. They are no longer in copyright, but you can pick up physical copies at Amazon if you want, or download them in PDF or other forms like I did.

Here are the links to the PDFs:

Constructive Carpentry

Inside Finishing

We’ve been busy

2009-07-23T10:10:00.001-04:00

I haven’t been writing to the blog much lately. We’ve been trying to take advantage of the sunshine (when we get it), and the longer days to get things done around the house.

We’ve had one disposal bin (20 yards) filled with debris left from our original renovations prior to moving in (the guttings of one bathroom, and all the misc stuff associated to upgrading plumbing and electrical). We have another one sitting in the driveway waiting to be filled with the remainder of our debris which is sitting in one of the rear school buildings.

We’ve had some architects visit to give us opinions and quotes on reworking the use of the rear buildings. More on that in another post to come.

We’ve heard back from MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corp) about our request for reconsideration. We had to file one as our property was classified as a split residential/commercial and our taxes were insane. There hasn’t been a commercial use of those rear school buildings in almost 20 years, and it wasn’t difficult to convince the inspector from MPAC that that was the case. They reassessed our property on that basis and also gave us an additional reduction due to depreciation of the structures. It dropped our taxes by about a 1/3.

In conjunction with the debris clear-out, I’ve setup a workshop in one of the rear school buildings. I’ve also bought all the necessary tools to build new storms and wooden replacement windows. My work-shop now includes:

A router table with 2HP router, special rail and stile router bits for making sash windows, 10” table saw (my old one) with a special jig for making tenons (my saw won’t support a dado blade so the jig is the best way to go), a dedicated mortising machine (which resembles a drill-press), glue-clamps, and all the tools for glazing glass.

I still have to pick up the wood to make the storms, but I’ve made some mock-ups using some scrap spruce with good results. I’ll put together a post with some step-by-step pictures for those who are interested.

I’ve also found some really good reference books on c.1912 construction and finishing techniques. Actually, they are books published in 1912 meant for students of carpentry. I’ll do a post about that shortly. They contain a huge amount of information about how and why homes in that period were built the way they were.

Stay tuned for some more posts…

Roofing Done (for now)

2009-06-05T15:02:00.001-04:00

I had intended to post a daily update on the roofing work, but with the roofers coming sporadically due to poor weather, and my new travel out of town for work, it wasn’t possible.

They finished this past Wednesday on everything we contracted them to do. We will likely be having them come back to finish the rest of our roof in a couple years. We opted not to have it all done at once due to budget constraints. We targeted the biggest problem areas.

Here are some shots of the front area with the two dormers:

A shot of the side of that same area (you can see the new shingle selection from this one and the new valleys):

And a few of the area with the new standing seam metal roof:

I have a few criticisms of their work, but I might be a bit too picky… Their caulking looks pretty messy in a few places, especially when viewed up close. The counter-flashing on the front near the right window is bigger than it was before (slightly) and doesn’t follow the same cut-in as it used to. I find it looks a bit odd. The old counter-flashing didn’t touch the edge of the window either.

Also, the space between the two dormers isn’t even. They insisted that they followed the wood framing of the roof exactly when they put their metal flashing up, so it must mean that it wasn’t even before or it has warped over the years. The result of this is that the gap becomes more narrow at the front.

The counter-flashing for the standing seam roof is higher than the old counter-flashing, which makes the lower wood piece in the Tudor framing look odd. We may be removing this area of stucco and Tudor framing and replacing it with cedar though. If we do that, we can have them remove the counter-flashing or shorten it and have the cedar shakes come over it.

Overall, we are pleased with their work. Now we can start repairing the side-sundeck’s windows and get the attic and dormers insulated. We may also get spray foam insulation installed under the side sundeck’s roof to help prevent ice dams.

Roofing… end of Day 1

2009-05-26T13:40:00.001-04:00

So, the roofers have redeemed themselves. They showed up early Monday and worked right through until 6pm and were back again at 7am today. They’ve done all the demolition/removal work, repaired some rotten roof decking, and started doing the ice and water shield.

What a difference having the area between the two dormers open makes to the overall look of the house.

After a discussion with the roofers about our poor condition stucco on the West side of the house, we’re considering changing that dormer area to cedar shingles, and getting rid of the Tudor elements that are there. We already have cedar in the dormer on the North side of the house (about the same size), so it wouldn’t really be against the original style elements, and it would allow us to leave the (slightly better condition) stucco on the Front (south), and East side elevations for next year (we don’t want to lose those Tudor elements). We’re waiting for a quote. If we do go with cedar shingles on this dormer, we can replace the asphalt skirting on the cantilevered sun porch with cedar shingles as well, which will tie things together nicely.

The sun porch metal roof was two layers thick and in pretty bad shape. Here are some before, and ‘in-progress’ pictures:

And finally, here are a couple pictures of the exposed wooden roof decking for the small portion that cuts across the second level of the front elevation (it was getting dark, sorry for the poor quality). It was previously covered with a painted galvanized metal apron, and will be covered with a new metal apron shortly.

If you look closely, you can see what our roofers are calling the ‘ski-jump’ angle of the roof. Basically, all our eaves and small roofs at the base of the dormers have this change in angle. It will look quite nice when clad with the new metal apron.

The roofers were unfortunately not able to match our existing wooden trim that is rotten, however they are salvaging and consolidating the stuff in decent condition and putting that in the most visible areas (lower roof elevations in the front), and found a reasonable match to use in the less obvious areas.

One of the roofers found the remnants of a pigeon nest in between the dormers with 2 eggs intact and said he felt bad about having to remove it (that nest has been inaccessible for a few weeks now, so I told him not to worry). then he found an intact nest of starlings with 4 baby birds inside. They found an opening into the soffit area through a previous metal patch that had lifted at the corner of our roof. They had to replace the decking, so they were very careful and made a new opening in the trim work on the soffit so that parents could get in and out. We’ll get the wildlife control people to come back in a couple weeks once the birds fledge.

We’re also getting rid of our whirly-bird (turbine) roof vent and putting in a new roof vent like this:

http://www.ventilation-maximum.com/English/product-model301.html

This type of roof vent is ideal as we have a lot of snow in the winter. They are relocating it from the front roof slope to the rear so it’s less visible from the front of the house. We may get some lower gable vents as well to help with attic ventilation as we can’t do soffit vents (the brick comes above the roof eaves and as a result we have closed soffits).

Lastly (sorry, long post), the roofers were kind enough to help install our new top damper for our parlor fireplace. You can see it at the top of the chimney in the first picture on this page. Now we can seal our fireplace flue from the top via the stainless steel cable that comes down our chimney.

Roofers came… and went…

2009-05-22T18:40:00.001-04:00

Our roofers started this week. They showed up on Tuesday morning after giving us an hour’s notice that another job had been delayed and that they wanted to start the repairs to our roof.

It seemed to be going well. They set up scaffolding at the front of the house, brought in a 60 ft ladder (the longest I’ve ever seen) to work on the front dormers, and setup two ladders with a work platform between them on the side porch.

That was on Tuesday. They have been back for very brief periods since then but haven’t done any further work. I called them today and they said they had to deal with some emergency jobs and that they’d be back on Monday.

It’s a bit dissappointing, but hopefully they’ll make good progress next week.

On the bright side, I did end up climbing their 60 ft ladder to get on top of the main roof, and measured the size of our chimney flue opening so I could order one of these:

http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Chimney/Top-Sealing-Chimney-Dampers/LockTop-II-Chimney-Cap-Damper

Our fireplace in the parlor on the main floor was originally coal and has a coal insert with it’s own built-in damper. The chimney itself doesn’t have a damper or a smoke shelf. We’ve been back and forth with some chimney experts on whether we can use the fireplace for burning wood or not. A couple chimney sweeps we brought in said we have to get a gas insert as the chimney flue is in bad shape, but I think they might be biased as they also sell those same gas inserts they say we need. I called in another sweep who said the flue looked fine, and we had a mason who rebuilds chimneys (inside and out) who said it’s fine and quoted us on putting in a new damper (which is quite expensive).

So, the advantage of the lock top damper is that we can seal the flue at the top to keep heat in and stop drafts from the chimney, and if we do decide to use the fireplace for wood burning, we don’t need a damper at the bottom of the chimney, the lock top damper will work just fine.

I’m hoping it arrives before the roofers remove their ladder so I can install it.

Den and Side Sun Room

2009-05-15T00:47:00.001-04:00

We’ve been working on the bathroom on the second level and had to have a room to store building materials and bathroom fixtures other than the bathroom itself so we could have room to work. For no good reason, the second floor den and sunroom became catch-all spaces for everything for the renovation and a bunch of unpacked boxes. For those who don’t remember our second floor plan, here it is with the den/sunroom indicated:

We finally got it cleared out a few evenings ago. You would think this meant that we must be finished the bathroom, but no, we haven’t. We decided that our son didn’t need 3 play rooms on the second level (his room, the rear sun room, and the extra bedroom at the back), so we sacrificed the small bedroom, and moved everything from the den there. Up until now, our only TV has been in the third floor office.

Here are some photos of the den and sunroom now. Excuse the lack of and condition of the furniture. When you move into a house that is twice the size of your last one, you don’t typically have enough furniture to fill every room.

The sunroom has a lot of window “issues”. Lots of broken panes of glass, and the condition of the glazing and paint is very bad. It doesn’t help that the steel roof over it suffered from significant ice damming this past winter, resulting in a lot of water damage to the room. Where you see red tuck-tape indicates a broken pane of glass that I either patched with plexi-glass I found in the basement or just taped to prevent it from falling out.

Here are some shots that illustrate the poor state of the windows:

I had to reattach a number of storms that were falling out or were stored elsewhere in the house. One interesting feature of many of our storm windows is a sliding pane that can be opened for air flow. We have that feature on probably 1 in 8 of our storms.

I’m thinking of making some small screens that can be put in place when the pane is open to keep the bugs out. It’s a nice feature to have as it allows you to leave your storms up all summer, but I’m not sure of the weather tightness of it.

The sunroom is getting a new standing-seam steel roof in a few weeks with ice and water shield and new roof decking. Then we’ll remove the damaged plaster and ceiling, insulate as much as we can, and hope that takes care of the ice-damming. We also plan to strip down all the windows, reglaze them and repaint. Given the number of windows we have to repair, we’re going to concentrate on the storms first so that if we run out of time before next winter, we’ll at least have weather-tight windows. We can address the poorly functioning double-hung and damaged in-swing casement next season if need be.

Replacing a Residential Water Main

2009-05-11T16:49:00.001-04:00

More pictures from our water main replacement

The trench to our house partially filled (they do the digging in stages so it’s easier to backfill):

The gas mains (new one is yellow) in the middle of the street.

Our new sewer line and a conduit for the new copper water line going under the sidewalk:

Lowering a trench protector into the pit in the street so the city workers can attach the new water main:

A device they attach to the new copper line to prevent corrosion (it just gets buried with in the pit):

The old water main (c1915):

The old water main cleaned up with drilling device attached:

The results after drilling. A new tapped valve in the water main. The puddle is partially from the drilling machine when it relieves pressure in the valve they attached, and partially from rain:

The new water line (3/4” copper) to our house with anti-corrosion device attached.

The shut-off attached to the line at our property line (the metal post coming off the copper line). You can see where the copper feeds into a conduit. They used this so they could bury their trench they dug across the street so they could do everything in stages and not shut-down our street for 2 days.

Overall, we’re quite pleased with the results. Our water flow has improved, and we don’t have to worry about tree roots in our sewer line causing a backup.

Just waiting for the bill from the city now…

Our Attic

2009-05-05T23:11:00.001-04:00

Before having our roof repaired and to verify that no animals were currently living in our attic, we decided to venture back up there and take a look. We had been up in December when we had our energy audit, but not since.

The attic is in a T shape, with ceiling heights at the peak of the roofline of around 7.5 ft. There’s no sign of leaks, but there have been animals in our attic in the past. We found a squirrel carcass in the small dormer, which was probably a year or two old, and another that was probably 20 years old. Thankfully nothing is living in there now, except for some starlings living in our soffits (which aren’t open to our attic).

The electrical you can see in the picture is all new. I guess the electricians decided they didn’t need to be very neat with their work up there and there’s at least 4 junction boxes (which are allowed in attics as long as they’re accessible. There might be some old knob and tube wiring you can see, but it’s all inactive.

Here’s a shot of me climbing into the small dormer where we found the dead squirrel:

After our roof is completely repaired, we’ll be having people come in to add 15-17” of insulation to bring the attic of up to R50. They will also be turning my self-made hatch (really a large hole) into a proper sealed hatch. The insulation you see here in the pictures of either old mineral wool, or old cellulose. It’s about 2 inches thick in the best areas, so about R2-R5.

Pigeon Nest and Roofing Update

2009-05-05T23:01:00.001-04:00

We’ve had a family of pigeons nesting in between our two front dormers. They’ve had babies, and we let them fledge before calling in an animal control company to try to encourage them to move out. We now have a family of 6 pigeons hanging around our roof and perching on wood trim ledges, but none in our roof anymore!

Note the 44 ft ladder they had to use. It’s definitely not in my comfort zone and I’m glad we hired someone for this work:

You can see the pigeons hanging around wondering why they can’t get back into our roof. All of this is temporary (and ugly, but oh well) until we have the roof repaired…

We’ve finally hired a roofing company to fix our front dormer situation. They are going to restore the roof to it’s original setup, with the dormer roofs separate with a gap between them. They are also going to replace the lower metal apron roof, and put a new standing seam steel roof over the cantilevered sun porch. They will be starting at the end of May. Stay tuned!

Yard Cleanup

2009-05-05T22:53:00.001-04:00

Our yard was in desperate need of attention. I don’t think it’s been properly maintained in a long time. The side yard in front of the coach house was overgrown with blackberry bushes, other vines, rocks, and general debris. Our front yard evergreen trees needed trimming, and the rear area of our driveway still had the remnants of an old wooden garbage bin that was partially destroyed to make way for our new electrical service.

We decided to tackle as much as we could this past weekend, as we had people coming to work on the water and sewer mains this week and there was no room to move. Here are some before and after pictures:

Front yard:

Rear driveway (note the new BBQ, yey!):

I didn’t get a good picture of the rear yard, but can confirm we put out about 10 compost bags, and 6 bundles of tree trimmings. The yard isn’t perfect, but it will suffice for now.

Water and Sewer Upgrades

2009-05-05T22:40:00.001-04:00

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the first couple years with us in the house will be filled with boring, non-cosmetic renovations, and our current project is no exception.

When we took possession of the house in early December, we signed up for a City of Ottawa program to replace our lead drinking water supply from the city. Ottawa has a program that allows home owners with lead supplies to have the city contract the work out for the entire job of replacing the line, including both the City portion (connecting to the main, digging in the middle of the street), and the home owner portion (digging a trench on your lawn, connecting to your existing plumbing). At the same time, if your sewer connection is in the same trench as your water supply, they’ll replace that too. You pay for the home owner portion and the city pays the rest. The advantage is that it’s all done at the same time, and the work is cheaper than you hiring someone yourself.

When we signed up, they had 2500 home owners on a waiting list! However, if you have a child under 6 years of age (which we do), they move you to the top of the list, as lead in drinking water is a no-no for young kids. Our supply was tested for lead levels in 2005, and was well under the provincial limits, but still high enough to warrant replacement. The lead lines over time can form a build-up inside the pipe that reduces water flow as well, which is another reason to replace it. As for the sewer, when we moved in, I noticed about 20 (!) RotoRooter stickers (each one for a service call) stuck around the room containing the main drain cleanout. Every one of them listed tree roots and backup as the reason for the visit. So, we figured it was just a matter of time before we added to the sticker collection with a backup of our own. Fun times.

Anyway, the city called a couple weeks ago, came out to take measurements, and then called on Friday to say they were coming on Monday to start the work. So, we now have an 8 foot deep trench running across our yard.

They are already done running the new sewer and copper water supply pipes in our yard and are starting the road digging tomorrow. I took some pictures on my mobile phone which I’ll find and post, but here are a few from the camera.

My son and our cat took an interest in the digger right outside our window:

Look closely at this one and you’ll see a jet of water coming from one side of the bank:

The water is from our supply. I guess the old lead line had a weak spot and when they excavated near it, it burst. It took almost an hour to fix the leak, which was done while the line was spraying them with water (they couldn’t get the main shut-off to work at the street). They ended up splicing some copper into the line with compression valves. It will hold until Thursday when we cutover to the new fully copper line.

History Update

2009-05-05T22:20:00.001-04:00

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll see various items about the history of our house, particularly from around the time when Carleton University owned our property and used it as the Student Union Building.

We’ve had some assistance with our historical research from the kind people at the Carleton Archives, and from the Office of Corporate Records at Carleton. We were contacted by the Corporate Records staff recently and asked if we wanted a copy of a 1958 real estate appraisal of our house.

For a mere $9 photocopying fee, we now have a very detailed review of the state of our house as of late 1958. The appraisal report discusses the state of each room, including floor finishes, trim work, lighting fixtures, and condition of plaster/wall paper.

From this report, we now know that the rear outbuildings were in fact built by Carleton. They are referred to as the recreation hall. The three rooms contained in the buildings were at that time one room, with supporting pillars between the original coach house structure and the newer concrete structure.

We also know what renovations the previous owners undertook to the main house between when they bought it from Carleton and when we bought it from them. The biggest changes were a second floor bathroom renovation and the installation of the PVC windows on the front of the house.

The report discusses yearly heating costs ($378.45), assessed taxes for 1958 ($508.58), contains a detailed neighbourhood description including transit, automobile routes, and nearby shopping, and has comparable house sales.

In case you’re wondering, our house was described as being in poor condition, and the appraiser recommended it be sold for use as a triplex. The appraised value was $18,500.

Also of note is that the report contains appraisals of two other properties on our street (one two doors down, another across the street and 5 doors down). They were owned by Carleton at the time, and were used for classes and department offices. Carleton was in the process of moving from the old Women’s College building on our street to the present day campus and had the report done in preparation for selling all of their properties that were no longer needed.

Spring brings challenges

2009-04-01T10:53:00.002-04:00

Now that the weather has improved, we're feeling the pressure to complete some of the ongoing work inside the house so we can concentrate on all the outdoor tasks we have. The second floor bathroom is moving slowly, but we're going to have to kick it into high-gear.

We picked up the windows that were kindly donated to us by Kate over at www.renovation-adventure.blogspot.com. We weren't able to take all the frames, which wouldn't have been much use to us anyway, but we got many sashes with intact wavy glass (perfect for restoration of our windows), lots of window hardward and some window weights. It took four trips to pick up everything we wanted and one of the back school buildings looks like a salvage depot now, but we're happy to have them.

The pigeons that have been nesting in our front dormers have babies now. We had wanted to have them removed prior to the eggs hatching and we had a half-dozen local wildlife control companies come by to examine the situation. Some of them didn't have tall enough ladders to address the situation (40' needed), others refused to take on the job because we had "too many issues" to address, and some of them were just too expensive. Now that the baby birds have hatched, we're going to wait until they've fledged, use that time to do some repairs to other possible areas of animal infiltration (the 6-7 squirrel-chewed holes in our fascia boards), and then have one of the companies back to deal with the pigeons.

We've had some roofing quotes for our side porch and to repair the front dormers. The opinions on the front dormers from the roofers have been varied. Some of them say to just flash over the opening created by the valley that was put in place where the dormer eaves almost touch. This isn't our preferred solution. One company is bringing their carpenter back this week to look into changing the size of the eaves on the small dormer, allowing us to have a larger space between the two dormers. They also suggested removing all the metal ice apron around the area to be replaced with full ice/water shield and shingles. The quotes for the small standing seam roof have been high, some as high as $4000. This is for a standing seam steel roof with new flashing, ice/water shield, some new decking, and a drip edge. Seems high to me considering the roof is 2nd storey (not hard to access), only about 15' x 8' and doesn't have eavestroughs. We're waiting on some more quotes.

We had a chance to go into a neighbours house recently. The house has been in their family for around 70 years and has a lot of the original interior features intact. I suspect that the builder is the same as ours, as so many elements are the same. They have the same fireplace mantel as us in their parlor, the same coal inserts, the same electric fireplace as us, and much of their wood and tile work is the same. I took a few pictures on my phone for our own reference. I'm going to ask permission to take some better quality pictures for the blog when I have a chance. It's nice to see original features intact and in better condition that ours. It gives me hope for the restoration we're undertaking. The other great thing about a house being in the family that long is that we now have confirmation that Carleton College built the rear school rooms. There was some doubt as to whether they put them up or if a later owner who ran an electronics college out of them was responsible, but they confirmed that Carleton had asked permission of the family to build right on their property line. It was somewhat of a debate in the family as to whether to allow this, but they eventually agreed and the school buildings were erected. I hope to talk to them further to get more historical information.

We've also had quotes for upgrading our attic insulation. It looks like the cost will be around $1700 to bring it up to R-50 for the main attic and to properly insulate all the knee walls. The government rebate is around $1200 for the work given that we've had an energy audit, so the cost is justified. We expect to save probably 10-20% off our heating bill as we have the equivalent of R-0 up their right now.

A couple other items of note... We've cleaned out the rear second floor sunroom. It was filled with construction debris and we decided to reclaim the space given the nice weather. Cleaning it out involved removing an old broken cast iron radiator that weighed close to 500 lbs, unsticking the 12 in-swing casement windows, replacing some trim that was removed during the electrical rewire and much cleaning. I'll post some pictures of the sunroom shortly; I'm waiting for a sunny day. Also, we're in the process of relocating all of our computer servers to a newly designated server room in the basement. It's actually the old storeroom under the stairs where previous owners stored jams and other pantry items, but it has ready made shelving and a door to keep the dust out from any other work going on down there. This will eliminate all the computer noise and heat from our 3rd floor office.

Sorry for the long rambling post. This would have been better as several smaller posts, but it's becoming harder to find time to post with everything going on.

Windows Part 1: Stained Glass

2009-03-19T10:41:00.001-04:00

We’re in the process of evaluating the condition of all our original windows to figure out which ones will be fixed this year. We’ll be repairing all the standard double-hung windows and storms ourselves (or at least that’s the plan), but I don’t have any expertise involving stained or leaded glass. We have several stained glass windows in the house…

These two are in our dining room (and are in pretty good condition):

Then there’s these two in our front parlor. One of them is starting to bulge outwards, so we want to get that fixed before it gets any worse:

Also, the other window in the picture above was likely originally stained glass. I say this because we have other windows elsewhere in the house this size that are multi-lite (2x2) so having a single clear pane of glass would be out of place. Right now, this window is plexi-glass and has no storm (just a ripped screen on it).

Then we have the two stained glass in the living room:

The blue tape in this picture is holding together the loose pieces of glass that are ready to fall out. It bulges outward by about 1.5”. Clearly in need of repair. Here’s the matching one on the other side of the room:

Actually, the stained glass window is in our basement and is in pretty good shape. We decided to wait to put it back in until the weather has warmed up, so we might get around to that in the next few days. I think this air conditioner has been there a while. It has a pile of pigeon poop on the outside and you can see successive attempts at weather stripping it over the years.

We don’t have much in the way of non-stained leaded glass in our house, except for our front entry door and side-light. Here is the side-light:

It has one cracked piece of glass, but otherwise looks pretty good. The door (to the left in the picture) doesn’t have it’s matching leaded glass insert, it was removed some time ago. We found it in the basement:

Clearly, it’s in need of significant repair/replacement.

We contacted a local stained glass expert and asked for quotes to repair the one living room window that is bulging outwards (measures around 16”x16”), do a minor repair on one of the parlor windows (16”x24”), repair/replace the broken piece in the door side-light, and do a full restoration on the front door leaded glass. Here are the prices we got back:

$270-320 to repair/re-lead the 16x16
$310-$360 to repair/re-lead the 16x24
$600-$700 to fix the broken glass in the sidelight (includes some re-leading if necessary)
$1100 to re-lead the front door insert and put all new glass in (not beveled like the original), bevel will be an additional charge

I have no idea if those are good prices or not as I haven’t been able to find someone else to quote the job yet. It seems a little high, and from the preservation brief on stained glass that I read, re-leading is supposed to be the last option in restoration. I’m not sure that the sidelight and 16x24 need that much work.

We don’t have $2500 in the budget this year to repair these. So, we might have to add some more tape, try to stabilize them in place, add in the missing storms for additional protection, and wait on the front door for now. Sigh…

Plans for the spring

2009-03-16T22:30:00.001-04:00

We spent some more time working on the second floor bathroom this weekend. We are ready to start putting up the drywall now. Our plan is to try to concentrate on the bathroom as much as possible because once the good weather is here to stay, we need to switch over to working on all the outdoor issues.

I’ve got calls into about five different roofers right now to get quotes on the standing seam metal roof over our cantilevered sun porch on the second level and to have repairs done to the two dormers (as described in a previous post). We also plan to have soffit vents installed around the main roof and have insulation blown into the attic (there’s only about 1/2” of loose insulation sitting up there). It may seem odd to be insulating in the springtime, but it will help with the summer heat (we don’t have air conditioning, yet) and we couldn’t insulate until all the knob and tube wiring was replaced.

While we get the professionals to figure out the roofing and insulating, we’ll concentrate on the numerous repairs to the windows. I made a trip over to our local Lee Valley store to pick up some supplies for window repair. They had decent glass cutters, and a glazier’s point tool (along with glazier’s points). They also had a small size wood repair kit (made by Abatron). I had to make a second trip to Preston Hardware to pick up the DAP33 glazing compound for glazing. Unfortunately no one carries copper window weather-stripping (only the cheap plastic stuff), so I’m putting in an order with Kilian Hardware. Kilian have the Abatron wood repair products in much larger sizes, so if I’m pleased with the results, I’ll order a 2 gallon tub of each of the WoodEpox and LiquidWood (I’m going to need a lot of it to repair all the rotten sills, frames, and window sashes).

Kate and Rob over at www.renovation-adventure.blogspot.com are in the process of replacing all their old wood windows. You can read more about it on their blog. I went by to visit them this afternoon (a big thank-you for the tour!), and they were kind enough to offer us their old windows. I don’t think they have any that will be an exact fit for the ones we’re missing, but the hardware and hinges, and much of their glass (the nice old wavy stuff) will be incorporated into our window repair project.

I spoke to a local company that does wood window restoration and repair. I was given their name as a possible source of the copper weather-stripping. They were nice enough to give me a few suppliers and some tips on restoration. I asked them how much it would cost to have them do our windows so I could get a feeling for how much we’re saving doing it ourselves. They charge $200/sq ft of window to do a complete repair. That includes repair/restoration of any rotten wood (sills, frame, sashes), repair/replacement of any broken hardware (pulleys, weights, locks), copper weather-stripping, replacement of ropes with chain, stripping and repainting (interior and exterior primer), and replacing broken panes with standard glass (extra charge for historic wavy glass). This also includes restoring the old wooden storm at the same time. This price seems especially high to me. We have some windows that are 18-21 sq ft (> $3500!). I asked how busy they are with that kind of work, and they indicated that they could fit me in sometime later this fall. Either there’s a huge demand in restoring wood windows here, or they don’t want the work; I haven’t decided which. Regardless, I feel pretty good about doing the work ourselves.

We have 56 windows in total (I’m counting window openings, not individual sashes), 10 of which are replacement PVC windows, so that leaves 46 original windows (62 individual sashes) to restore (plus all the corresponding storms, I think we’re missing only 1 or 2). I think we’ll be busy this summer…

High resolution picture from 1950.

2009-03-11T00:21:00.002-04:00

As per a previous request, here is an extremely high resolution picture of the front of the house from around 1950. Warning, the picture is big.

This picture is used with permission from the Carleton University Archives. On close inspection, you can see what appears to be cedar shingles between to the two upper front dormers, and the metal along the bottom of that area. Also, you can see the nice front windows that have all been replaced with PVC. It appears that they are casement (with 3x3 upper sashes), not double-hung like the rest of the windows in our house.

Roofing shots … Part 3

2009-03-10T23:48:00.001-04:00

In case you’re wondering why this post has been split up, I’m trying to use MS LiveWriter to post to my blog and any time I’ve tried to upload a post with a large number of pictures, it times out. I’ll try to fix this, but for now, I’m splitting up my larger posts.

This next photo was taken from one of the windows at the back of our house:

Another good example of the condition of our windows. The roof you see in the picture is over the rear sunroom off the second floor hall. You can also see the original coach house roof (angled-roof on left), and the newer (as in 1950) school building roof (flat roof beside coach house). The sunroom roof is in pretty good shape compared to the other areas.

Next is a picture looking to the left outside the above window.

You can see the top of the fire escape leading up to our 3rd floor bathroom window, and beyond you can see the gap where the gable soffit meets the lower roof ledge. I’m not sure the best way to address this, but I’m concerned about critters getting in here.

Next is a picture looking upwards from the same window.

I like this shot and not just because there’s no horrible damage visible. This is the only vertically shingled area of the house, across the entire back of the third floor. It was painted at some point in the past and remains in pretty good condition. The fascia trim will need to be stripped and repainted of course.

Here’s a picture looking to the right out that window.

Again, the large gap that needs to be dealt with. You can even see some bird dropping remnants here.

Our roof is worse than we thought, continued

2009-03-10T23:43:00.001-04:00

This next photograph is looking out of one of our left-side windows. I took this to illustrate the condition of the window frame. I’ll do another more detailed post on the condition of our windows later.

In the above photo you can also see the metal roof that covers our cantilevered side sun room off our second floor den (see previous post for a better view of the sunroom). I’m thinking this roof is constructed of some sort of galvanized metal sheeting that is joined at the raised ridges.

Here are a couple more photos of the roof:

As you can see, there are some penetrations, especially on the raised ridges. These are likely where fasteners were that have lost whatever caulking they once had.

In addition to the poor state of this roof, where the eave from the upper roof meets this room, we’ve been getting some ice damming which penetrates into the sunroom below during thaws. We’ll have to address this soon as it’s causing considerable damage to the plaster and wood work in the sunroom.

Anybody have suggestions on what to replace this with? I think copper would be beautiful, but it’s a side sunroom, so perhaps just a shingle room or new (cheaper than copper) metal roof?

Taken from the same window, the next photo shows the damage to the exterior render above this roof and near it:

You can also see the problems that have been created when this roof was put over whatever was there before. The roof metal acting as flashing up against the bottom of the stucco/wood framing has pulled away.

The above photo is the worst area of render damage, but pretty much all of it needs to be addressed. You can just barely see it, but the wood lathe behind the render is showing here. I’m amazed we don’t have much more significant water damage below this area. You can also make out previous patches that don’t match up with the original render (likely done in Portland cement or some other unsuitable material).

Here’s a close-up of the flashing problem:

Still more to come…

On second thought, our roof is worse than I thought…

2009-03-10T23:29:00.001-04:00

In a previous post, I discussed some concerns about an area of our roof where two dormer eaves touch. The weather was reasonably mild today and I felt daring, so I hung myself out some windows on our third floor for some more photos. You should be able to open the high-resolution versions by clicking on the photo). Try not to cringe…

Here is the first area that will require extensive work. You can see the rotten wood making up the soffit and fascia, the water penetration, bird droppings, etc…

Taken from the front-right window on the third floor:

The same taken from the front left window:

This next photo is of the small roof ledge below this area. This area has been covered with metal since at least the 1950s.

I think it would be preferably to replace it with shingles. It needs repair as the part acting as flashing against the brick has pulled away (missing caulking). You can also see some previous repairs. Note the lovely bird droppings coming from above. Since we took possession of the property in December, we’ve seen some starlings and more recently pigeons hanging out here. I went up into the attic a while ago and they haven’t made it in there yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Post to be continued…

Our roof issues

2009-03-06T22:38:00.012-05:00

With the weather starting to warm (even if just temporarily), I've been thinking more about our outside work that we'd like to address this year. We have tons of broken panes of glass in our old windows (probably at least 20-30 pieces of glass need to be replaced), not to mention wood rot and general repair to the windows and frames, but we have two issues with our roof that need more immediate attention.

You can see in the following two pictures the first problem:

You can see where the two gables meet in the middle. In this area, the roofing material crosses over and creates a flat valley. I'm not even sure what the roofing material is, but we have huge icicles form here and all the wood work in the area is very damaged, to the point of starting to fall off.

Does anybody have any ideas of what we can do here to repair this? My gut tells me the gable ends should not be covered, but I'm wondering if it's just poor design of the roof line. We're going to be getting some quotes soon, as a lot of the roofers in the area seem to take the winter off.

The second area concerns the cantilevered sun porch on the west side of the house:

Aside of the fact that a broken window pane has provided a nest for some squirrels, and that pigeons like to hang out here (evidence is pretty obvious), if you look closely at the corner of the roof in the first picture, you'll notice the wood work and gutter hanging. This roof is metal (I haven't taken a good picture of it, but I will next time I think of it). and again, we get huge icicles hanging off the entire outside (lowest) edge of the roof. When the weather warms, we get puddles of water pouring through the top of the window frames. Again, we're not sure what needs to be done here. The downspouts (we think original) aren't attached anymore, so I'm not sure the gutter is very effective.

Here are some more random pictures of our roof. You will note the poor flashing job around the chimney, the various holes in the soffits (if you look closely you can see bird droppings beneath one of them), and the at least 2 layers of ashphalt shingles. Overall, the roof isn't that bad, but it's not perfect either. I'd like to find out what the original roofing material was. I'm thinking probably cedar shingles, but I do think that if we ever had the budget for it, a slate roof would look great.

Here's a picture of the roof from the late 1940's. I'm pretty sure those are ashphalt shingles on there, so probably we had cedar shingles to being with (slate would have lasted a lot longer than 30-40 years). Note the nice original windows that are have been replaced with vinyl on the front of the house.

More House History

2009-03-03T23:38:00.001-05:00

The archive group at Carleton University responded with some results. They found 14 items that reference our house. They sent me four photographs: two outside shots and two interior shots. One of the interior pictures is hard to tell if it was actually taken in our house as there isn't any recognizable features. The other was taken in our living room facing the opening to our dining room. Photographs courtesy of Archives and Research Collections, Carleton University Library, used with permission:

They also scanned and sent along 3 pages of text from the school calendar, and 7 pages from a book called 'Creating Carleton' (a history of Carleton). The calendar pages are essentially copies of each other and state the following (taken from the 1949-1950 calendar):

"Nearby is a three-storey student activities building [our house!] which provides accomodation for Student Association offices, "The Carleton" (student weekly newspaper), reading rooms, games rooms, darkrooms, radio broadcasting rooms, club rooms, and a student lounge."

The book 'Creating Carleton' has a picture of our house on one page and mentions that Carleton purchased the property in 1948 for $18,000 to provide space for the Students' Council, the Carleton, and the student clubs. The book also talks about some of the activities in our house, including how the Student Council held a 'Frosh Court' for dealing with infractions during frosh week, how an incident involving four students and drinking occurred on the property, and how some thought that student behaviour was getting out of hand.

There is also a cartoon from the school newspaper which depicts some students drinking and gambling on the floor of our current dining room. The cartoon was part of an editorial response to concerns over student behaviour. Published in The Carleton, 20 Jan., 1955, used with permission:

Our house feels a bit different to me now as I walk through the rooms. Knowing that it had such an interesting and rich history makes me think about the space more. The old darkroom lead sinks in the basement were scary on first sight, but now I can imagine some young newspaper photographer trying to develop photos down there.

No records of when the classrooms were built and what classes were taught there could be found in the archives. This opens the possibility that these structures were put in place by the subsequent owner. I wouldn't have thought this to be the case. He bought the property to use it for his electronics school, so why would he buy a property that was split up into student offfices and club rooms, which he would have to undo so he could have his family live there, and then on top of that build three classrooms? It seems more likely that Carleton added the classrooms after the student association was established here, maybe during their expansion in the mid-1950's, then quickly sold the property on to the subsequent owner once the new larger present-day campus became available in 1959. It would have been ideal for the next owner with 3 ready-made classrooms, and a large house for his family, close to other education facilities to draw in potential students.

The next steps when we have the time will be to try to visit the archives ourselves to go through some of the old photos and early editions of the student newspaper. A request was also made with the corporate archive group for the University. Their archivist is examining board meeting minutes, and other corporate documents from that time to find references of our house. This might help shed some light on the classrooms as building them would have required a large expenditure.

House History

2009-03-03T13:06:00.001-05:00

Our house was once owned by Carleton University, one of the two universities located in Ottawa (see http://www.carleton.ca/). We've found the records at the Ottawa Land Registry office showing when the house was sold from it's original owner to the organization that eventually became Carleton. They owned the property from 1948 until 1959. We know they modified the original coach house, expanding it to accomodate a large classroom and they also built two more classrooms in a single-level concrete structure beside the coach house. That's all we really know about their use of our house. There is a vague reference on the history of Carleton webpage that mentions that they bought three neighbourhood homes in the area of their main building (the old Ottawa Ladies College, which is now a posh condo development) and used the homes for some classes and for student offices.

After speaking to a friend of ours who is a professor at Carleton, I decided to contact the University of Carleton Archives and ask for more information. So, I navigated over to their website and found this photo on their main photo exhibit page (Photograph courtesy of Archives and Research Collections, Carleton University Library, used with permission):

What a surprise it was to find a picture of our house! This was likely taken in the late 1940's. If you look closely, you can see a small sign centered at the top of the front porch, likely displaying the name of the College.

I contacted the head of the archives and an archives technician is pulling together anything they can find relating to the property for us. In particular, we asked for information about what they used the house for (classes or departments that were located at the house), and any information about the structures they built and other modifications. They are going to go through some of the photos that were taken of social events as well and see if any reference our house. It will probably take a week or two, but when they get back to us, I'll post more.

The picture of the house shows what the original windows looked like. It also shows that the concrete porch was in place at that time; we weren't sure if it might have been added at a later date. I doubt that the concrete porch is original to the house, but it's been there since at least the late 1940s. It also appears that the driveway is on the right side of the house, since the left side (where the coach house is at the back) is all grassy. Other than the replaced front windows, the house looks pretty much the same as today.

Electrical service

2009-02-26T22:53:00.001-05:00

This post is a little out of date, but we had our cutover to our new 200 AMP electrical service a week and a half ago. I took some pictures of the friendly utility workers who came by to do some of the work. They actually came by a day early due to an ice storm warning, and did much of the work required then so they didn't have to climb up utility poles the next day. The advantage for us is that instead of having the power out for hours, it was only out for a few minutes on the cutover day because of all the advance work they did.

A couple comments on the new electrical. I love having breakers and not having overloaded circuits! I will say that I'm not a huge fan of arc-fault protectors. The new code requires arc-fault (AFCI) protection for all bedrooms. AFCI's are notorious for tripping and being really touchy with things like lamps and anything with a motor (don't use a reciprocating saw on an AFCI circuit). One of our new AFCI breakers tripped every time we turned on a table lamp. The cause was two wires that were slightly pinched in one of the boxes. Very hard to diagnose and yet another reason to hire professionals to do your wiring.

Also, our electricians insisted that they had to put light switches at 51" (or thereabouts). This meant that all our old light switches need patching as they were at 46-48". They told me this was code, but I can't find a single mention of a height for switch boxes in the code. I'm not happy about this because of all the extra plaster patching that I have to do. We've also noticed that we should have spent more time thinking about where to put switches and plugs in some of the rooms. The electricians put them where they thought they should go, and now that we're using them, we notice that not all of them are best placed.

Interesting architecture outside our window

2009-02-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

This is the view from one of the 3rd floor bedrooms (the window is quite dirty, sorry).

Here is a better picture of the structure.

It was built as a Methodist church in 1914, later became a United Church, then after two United churches (within 2 blocks of each other) merged due to low attendance, the building was bought by the city and converted to a community centre. One of the neat features of the community centre is that the very top part of the roof is actually glass and in the evening it looks quite beautiful. The structure was designed by Clarence Burritt, who also designed the Confederation Building in Ottawa.

One of the things we've taken to doing lately is walking around the community exploring the variety of buildings. There are a lot of churches in our area (we live in an area called The Glebe, which means 'church lands'), and a nice selection of late Victorian and Edwardian homes. There's a good mix of detached, semi-detached, row homes, and turn of the century apartment buildings.

Our Kitchen Is (Almost) Done!

2009-02-18T12:32:00.001-05:00

Well it's been a work in progress since we took possession back in December, but our kitchen is finally ready to be used as a kitchen again! We've had to change the appliances (the mustard yellow/avocado green styling's of the fridge and stove weren't exactly to our taste).

On the walls we found a layer of wallpaper with wood grain printed on it (an obvious choice to complement the rest of the actual wood in our house), covering a layer of minty green tile-printed rubbery wall covering. This was stuck to the plaster beneath using a tarry black adhesive that resulted in some pretty awful looking walls once it had all been removed.

This is the result of removing all the wall coverings and flooring and before we patched up the plaster.

And here is that same wall where the fridge and stove once stood.

On the day we took possession, the previous owners had left all kinds of gems behind which they later picked up.

Beyond the clutter:

Also note the lovely cord hanging down into the middle of the room. That was a switch that controlled the room’s only light… Thankfully our new fixture will be controlled by an actual switch on the wall.

And after purchasing some new open-box appliances and a visit to our local Swedish home furnishings store:

The new counters are wood and have turned out great with a few coats of oil. They need a bit of a sanding as the grain from the wood has come up as it’s absorbed the oil, but after a quick buff it should be smooth and ready to use.

As for the butler’s pantry, the flooring is finished and the walls have been skim coated, but the old cabinets still need a good cleaning and some new countertops. The sink has also been much improved, not to mention cleaned. When we took possession the previous owner’s were trying to unplug the sink using a toilet plunger. Further investigation before we moved in a few weeks ago revealed a drain filled with smelly debris of all types. After removing all the drain pipe and replacing with new PVC, and replacing the leaky tap we’ve now got a secondary sink we can use for washing and drying dishes, and which I’m surprisingly happy to have. I really like the drying racks built into the sink.

At some point we’ll probably have it re-enameled. And one final before and after picture, taken from the butler’s pantry looking into the kitchen.

We’ve still got kick plates, handles, and other things to finish up, but soon our priorities will be shifting to the 2nd floor bath so some of these details will have to wait.

We're in!

2009-02-13T12:47:00.000-05:00

We've been so busy moving in and getting settled, that there just hasn't been time for any blog posts the past week.

We managed to complete most of the move over the weekend with our last load being brought over on Monday morning. It is so nice to be in the new house, but it still feels much like a construction zone.

The three of us are sleeping in one room right now, as the rest of the 2nd and 3rd floor rooms are in a shambles. We have only one working bathroom (there are 5 in the house if you include the two school house powder rooms that are falling apart. We are using the cast iron tub up on the 3rd floor while we wait for our main bathroom to assemble itself.

The sink we ordered for our new kitchen was backordered so we hooked up the old kitchen sink (circa 1950's). We had it disconnected by the plumbers when we had started the kitchen demolition, so it took a fair bit of work to get it fixed. After I finally had it hooked up, it stopped draining. It ended up that there was a ton of gross gunk all backed up into the plumbing vent and more it came loose after we started using it again. So, I had to cut out all the drain/vent pipe as far as I could, and redo it, including a new trap and a small cheater vent (AAV) under the sink in case the main vent is backed up further up the line (which is a possibility). The original faucet was badly leaking, so we replaced that too.

Then came the electrical upgrade. The local hydro company came and hooked up our new 200 AMP service, and the electricians ran the new mast and wiring to the new panel and did the switch over. Then they left, without finishing the 60AMP subservice line to the old school houses (no power out there right now), and without properly checking all the plugs and switches (there are 4-5 not working), and not putting any switch and plug covers on (not a good thing with a 2 year-old running around). They are coming back on Monday.

Then the weather warmed up, and our basement flooded from melting ice/snow. There was around 1 inch of water in a few places and most areas of the basement got wet. We were smart enough to elevate all of our belongings we just moved in, but it was not a happy event. The school house flooded as well, which sucks because we have a lot of construction materials out there. And the ice melting off the roof made our driveway dangerous due to the falling chunks of ice sheet. Then a bucket catching water pouring through the sunroom roof fell over and caused water to come through our dining room ceiling.

Fun times. Now I have to do some office work so I can go and hang some more kitchen cabinets so we can put away our food and dishes instead of living out of boxes. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I don't have time to post any. Maybe when I'm in a better mood. Oh ya, the floors turned out great now that they are finally finished. One thing we're happy about.

Move in date...

2009-02-06T13:32:00.001-05:00

So, now that the floors are done (they put the last coat of urethane on this morning), we have decided to take the plunge and move in later this weekend. We've been trying to hold off on the move for as long as possible, but our rental lease is almost up, and now that the plumbing, electrical, floors, and new boiler are more or less done, the house should be liveable.

You'll notice in the floor pictures (see previous post) that some of the walls aren't exactly pristine. We ran out of time for plastering and repairing some of the walls, and opted to have the floors done first. Normally, you wait until the rest of the renovation work is done, but with a two-year old running out, we didn't want to have unsealed floors in such poor condition. We're just going to have to put down tarps and paper to keep the mess off the new floors.

We'll have more pictures up of the kitchen and bathroom progress shortly, along with the finished floor (once the top-coat dries). Hopefully we'll be settled in by Monday and then we can start devoting more evening time (when the little one is sleeping) to make progress on the unfinished items on our list.

Refinishing The Hardwood Floors

2009-02-05T22:51:00.001-05:00

Over the last few days we've been having our hardwood floors refinished on the main floor. We've got birch flooring in the kitchen and butler's pantry, and red oak in the parlour, living room and dining room. When we moved in, the flooring in the parlour/front hall was covered with a layer of old adhesive, some kind of fibre board, and then some lovely linoleum that was in a bad state. We really had no clue what we'd find under that flooring if we ripped it up, but after working in the space for a number of weeks curiosity got the better of us and decided to have a look.

We were having some problems deciding on a stain colour, and opted in the end for Minwax's Golden Oak stain. We wanted something that would be lighter than all the existing panelling and wood, but not too light. Although it hasn't been sealed yet, we're both very happy with the colour and the way it compliments the walls.

Here are some pics of the parlour floor looking towards the back of the house:

These two shots are looking in the opposite direction from the photos above, back towards the front door in the parlour.

The kitchen flooring had considerably more old adhesive than the parlour flooring, and also had lots more water staining. It had layers of fibre board, vinyl tiling, and then its own style of linoleum floor. It was definitely in the worst shape of all the floors:

Butler's pantry:

Tomorrow the guys are coming back for a final layer of urethane to seal the floor, but here are a few other pictures taken this morning while the sun was streaming into the living room and dining room.

As it turns out, the guys had to fill the cracks in the floor between all 5 sandings, and some areas of water damage required a considerable amount of sanding. In the end, most of the dark black colour was removed, but some of those same boards did take the stain a bit differently than the other boards. I'm of the opinion that it just adds some character to a nice old floor.

Quick update on our progress

2009-01-22T17:17:00.000-05:00

The electricians are continuing with the rewire. They've finished snaking wires everywhere except the 3rd floor, which will be done via the attic. They've agreed to be done everything in the main house by next Wednesday, which leaves the service upgrade (which I have to go to Ottawa Hydro to pay a fee for), and the back school house. This bodes well, since we are hoping to start refinishing the floors at the beginning of February.

One of the plumbers returned today to do the rough-in for the main bathroom. He managed to complete everything except the outlet for the hand shower. He's hoping to be back tomorrow and will do some radiator work at the same time. The other plumber (same company, different guy) will be back tomorrow to install our indirect hot water tank. I'm hoping he can assist with the radiator work and fix some odds and ends still outstanding with the boiler upgrade.

We are debating whether we have the time to complete the refinishing of the floors on the main level and also all the finishing work to be done in the main bathroom. So, to keep our options open, we had 5 flooring companies come in and give us quotes. I have one more to come in tomorrow, but the prices seem reasonable compared to the effort we need to put into it ourselves.

I also had a contractor come in to give us a quote on patching all the holes the electricians have made and help us drywall and tile the bathroom. He thinks it's about 5-6 days of work in total, and his rates are good and materials at cost, so we may get him to help out. The bonus is that he has a break in other jobs next Thursday and can probably work the weekend prior to the floor refinishing.

Our preference is to do all work that doesn't require a license (ie. plumbing/electrical), but given that we want to be in the house by February 14th for good, and we still have a gutted kitchen, bathroom, plumbing/electrical to be done, floors to be refinished, etc..., I think we have to face reality. There will be no shortage of work over the next few years for us, so I'm okay with that.

Also, we had someone come in to quote us on an alarm system. I won't get into the details on the system (not really suitable for an online blog), but given the labour involved to put it in (not a whole lot), and the cost of the components (I looked them all up online), they are gouging us (try 100% markup!). It's a small enough job and all low voltage wiring (where it's not wireless), so I might just get the components myself, do the install/setup, then hire a company to do the monitoring.

I'll post pics of our kitchen progress, the bathroom rough-in, and a few other areas we're working on in my next post.

We can sand our flooring. Yey.

2009-01-19T12:58:00.000-05:00

After ripping up 2 layers of old vinyl and linoleum flooring in the parlor, kitchen, and butler's pantry, including scraping off old bits of fiber board and removing about a million nails, we finally exposed all the original hardwood flooring. Then we got out the belt sander and sanded a few spots to make sure that the old finish, water staining, and general poor state of the flooring is salvageable. Here are some pictures of the results... We're very pleased.

New boiler pics

2009-01-19T12:40:00.001-05:00

As promised in previous posts, here are some before/after shots of our new boiler. Not as exciting as a finished kitchen or updated decor, but this is a big thing for us.

A few comments relating to the boiler... the work isn't completely finished. We are waiting for them to come back to hook up the indirect hot water tank. The piping is in place, but the tank hadn't come in from the supplier yet. Also, the outdoor reset switch isn't installed. This is a small outdoor thermostat that measures the outside tempurature and varies the tempurature of the water in the system to provide better control and improved efficiency. Right now, the boiler is set to 160 F, which is making our two upper floors way too hot. Lastly, one of the old pipes going into where the old boiler was that they plugged is leaking. They realized the leak was there after bringing the system back up to full pressure, and since it was so cold on the day of cutover, and it's only leaking slightly (a few drips a minute) they decided to fix it when they come back.

They still have to put the cover on the new boiler too. It's so much smaller than the old one.

New boiler adventures...

2009-01-16T11:14:00.000-05:00

So, I was all excited yesterday about our new boiler being turned on. I said in my last post that I'd have pictures to show of it and the flooring we uncovered, and that we were just happy to have our 85 year-old, natural gas-guzzler (originally oil) boiler removed.

Well... the cut-over to the new boiler went ok, until the plumbers realized that one of our radiators was too cold and froze up while they were refilling the system. The rad is in our laundry room, which was originally a 3-season sun porch, but had a radiator added to it. The room dropped to around -15 C during the shut-down period, and when they refilled the system, it froze up before they had a chance to fire up the new boiler.

It didn't help that the crawl space beneath the sun-porch is uninsulated and has several large gaping holes open to it from the electricians running the new wiring. Nor did it help that we removed the insulated drop-ceiling from it last week. And then there is the fact that the back wall of that space is adjacent to the school buildings which are heated by a separate furnace which we turned off (and then had the gas line cut that leads out there). Then there's the drafty windows in that space...

Anyway, the plumbers used their torches to warm the radiator up, then we setup some electric heaters in the space (which took some time since we blew a couple fuses figuring out how to run multiple electric heaters on our outdated electrical system). When we left for the evening, the radiator was midly warm, and the tempurature was 2 C. We laid some insulation on the floor, covered it with plywood, and tucked insulation into every drafty gap we could find. After we got back to the rental, I decided that I didn't feel comfortable with leaving that room overnight with electric heaters and a potentially freezing radiator, so I packed up my sleeping bag and stayed in the house last night, setting my alarm so I could check the radiator several times throughout the night. With the insulation on the floor and the drafts cut down somewhat from insulation stuffing, the tempurature got up to 11 C, so we're in the clear for now.

We will be spending some time this weekend insulating the floor and walls of that space to see if we can create a reasonable space to have our laundry out there. If not, then we'll have to move the laundry back to the scary basement. I'm not excited about crawling around in a dirty crawl-space in -20 C weather, but something has to be done. If nothing else, we can put an electric base-board heater out there, just to have some extra BTU capacity in that room on really cold days.

I'll see about getting those floor and boiler pictures up later today.

On a cold day in Ottawa...

2009-01-15T10:13:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if it's officially the coldest day this winter here in Ottawa, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. It was -27 C last night, -36 C with the wind chill.

The boiler plumbers asked me to set the thermostat at our the house to 80 F last night before we left so that the house would be nice and warm for today because they've decided to do the cutover to the new boiler today! It was so cold last night, that the tempurature near the thermostat was only 65 F this morning, probably because we have three radiators on the ground floor disconnected for other renovations right now.

I will post some pictures and a status update later today when the new boiler is on. We also made significant progress on removing the old vinyl flooring in the kitchen and parlor, and the hardwood underneath is for the most part in great shape. I'll get some pictures of that posted later today as well.

Brrr, it's already getting cold in here. The laundry room has already dropped to -2 C, I'm glad the water pipes out there are drained right now.

History of our house

2009-01-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

We've done a bit of research on our house's history through some emailing to the local historical society and a brief visit to the Land Registry Office. We've discovered that our house was under construction during 1914, was completed sometime in 1915, and was sold to the first 'real' owner in 1916.

Here's a brief outline of the history of our house:

1909 - plan showing the lot is submitted to the city, owned by local church

1912 - lot sold to two real estate agents and a contractor ($3,000)

1913 - lot transferred to the contractor, real estate agents are removed from the deed ($2,350 changes hands)

1916 - property sold to the President of a local typewriter company (house is now complete) ($4001 + the new owner assumes an existing $7000 mortgage at 7% interest, so total value of transaction $11,001)

1948 - property sold to local college operating in the same neighbourhood ($18,000)

1948-1959 - college builds large classrooms at back of property

1957 - college becomes a university, moves to new permanent campus

1959 - property sold to Toronto engineer, who sets up electronics college ($19,500)

mid 1980s - engineer retires, closes electronics college, continues to live in the house

2008 - engineer passes away, we buy the house

We're going to try to pull more data from the 1901 and 1911 Canadian census records on the various people involved. We'll also head to the Ottawa archives to see if they have tax roll records like they do in Toronto. Those records show who was living in the house (all occupants, including servants and children), the occupation of the head of household, and their religious affiliation.

Second Floor Plan

2009-01-07T11:48:00.000-05:00

Here is the layout for the second floor. I probably have some of the angles in the hallway wrong. They are hard to measure and layout accurately. But they are pretty close.

And for a quick update for today, the plumbers are here finishing some venting replacement for the 2nd floor bathroom, the boiler plumber is here continuing work on the replacement boiler, and the electricians are continuing with the replacement of the knob-and-tube. The house is very full today. I'm squirrelled away in one of the bedrooms upstairs doing some work.

Electricians, plumbers, and more...

2009-01-06T15:53:00.000-05:00

The electricians have started today. They are rewiring the entire house. The house currently has a 100AMP fuse box (plus a 600V, 60AMP, 3-phase panel with separate service in the back school rooms, see previous posts if you're confused by the use of the term 'school-room' for our house). Most of the wiring is currently knob-and-tube (which is an insurance no-no, especially since ours is not in very good shape), but we also have some mixed-in DIY wiring, circa 1960s, which is really not safe or to code. We are having our service moved so we don't have our meter in the driveway, getting a new 200AMP breaker panel, and the entire house wiring will be replaced. These guys are really good at what they do, they snake wires through the walls, drill very small holes where necessary, and have promised not to harm our original wood trim.

In addition to the main house rewire, they are removing the 3-phase panel in the school house, and replacing it with a feeder panel (60AMP) from the main service. This makes Ottawa Hydro happy since when they came out to look at our service relocate, they freaked out when they found out we have a second service coming into those back buildings. They were even more surprised to find out it's 3-phase. The electricians have pulled all the necessary permits, are on the ACP (approved contractor program) with the ESA, and are bringing the house fully up to code (GFCIs, AFCIs where required, etc...).

We also had our hot water radiator system drained today so the plumbers could remove some rads that we need relocated, and some others that have to come off so we can refinish the flooring on the main level. It was cold in here for about 3-4 hours, but now that the system is restored, it's not bad at all. I'm sure our gas bill was big for today though.

In other news, some of our new kitchen appliances arrived today (still in wrap so we don't damage them with all the other work going on), we have a working toilet and taps in a bathroom (the 3rd floor carpeted one), and the second floor bathroom is more or less ready to be put back together.

Also, the electricians discovered that our house is balloon-framed, which means the outer-wall studs go from the foundation all the way up to the attic (with new ones tied into the lower ones as you go up). This makes the electricians happy since they can snake wires up through the walls from basement to 3rd floor without hitting floor framing. The main difference between this style of construction over the modern framing style, is that in modern framing, the outer stud walls are constructed floor by floor, with the floor framing between them, whereas in balloon framing the floor joists are hung off the wall studs and the wall cavities aren't interrupted by each floor's framing. It also provides nice cavities from attic to foundation for blown in cellulose insulation which explains why our house is fully insulated without a lot of replaced bricks.

Sorry for the long post without a lot of pictures. I'm going to try to get the second floor plan up on the blog shortly.

Help Identify our Electric Fireplace

2009-01-01T22:13:00.000-05:00

We have an electric fireplace in our second floor den. There are no markings to indicate who made it, or anything else to help us identify what type it is. It takes 3 bulbs (I presume to produce heat) and has an old push-button on/off switch (very similar to the rest of our light switches in the house). I assume it's an antique, original to the house (circa 1910-1915), but it could have been added later. The area of the house it's located in doesn't have a chimney, so it's not a retrofit into an existing fireplace. Here are some photos. Ignore the fake brick wallpaper that is covering up the mostly missing tiles. Please help us identify the maker/type of this fireplace:

As an additional question to any fireplace experts out there. Any guesses as to the maker/type of this wood burning fireplace insert? This is in the front foyer of our house. I imagine the mantel is custom, but the insert was probably mass-produced?

Our intentions for the house

2008-12-31T13:28:00.000-05:00

Some people have asked us what we have planned for the house. A few contractors have commented outright that we obviously must be intending to gut the entire inside (plaster, trimwork, flooring, etc...) to start over with a fresh, modern look. I find their opinion amusing, and a little sad. We expect to have to remove some plaster and possibly some woodwork during our time working on the house, but we bought the house because of all of it's original features, not just for it's location and size.

Our intentions are to update the house with lighter paint colours, probably leaving most (if not all) of the original trim work unpainted. We'll sand the floors and choose a stain colour that complements the other woodwork without making the rooms look too dark. We'll update and add lighting to rooms that need it. The electrical, plumbing, and heating systems will be completely updated to modern standards. We might add A/C at some point (probably via a high-velocity unit in the attic).

I should state that we are not restoration purists. We don't intend to restore the bathrooms and kitchen to their original state. Those rooms have been altered over the years and don't look anything like what they originally looked like. We'll modernize the kitchen and bathroom spaces to include features that we want to have. That means new cabinets, tile or other flooring, modern fixtures, and new lighting. We'll also paint and repair the external render and likely change the colours of the Tudor-style features.

The things we'll try to restore and not just rip out are the original windows (where they remain), the wood soffit and fascia, the damaged wood work in the second floor sunroom (off the den), the wonky and uneven flooring (throughout), and the pocket doors.

We'll even (eventually) replace the front PVC windows with more historically accurate windows, ideally wood with true lights to match the other original windows.

I thought it would be useful to clarify our position on restoration vs. renovation for our new house.

False ceiling in office

2008-12-31T13:20:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple pictures of the false ceiling I mentioned in yesterday's post. You can see the bead board original ceiling above the drop ceiling.

Here is a shot of the outside of the sunroom/office. The small transom windows above the lower set of windows is contained in the drop ceiling space and has insulation wedged up against them from the inside. Once we have the drop ceiling fully down, those windows will help bring in natural light into the space.

Pocket Doors

2008-12-31T13:11:00.000-05:00

We have two sets of pocket doors that are roughly 7'6" tall and 6' wide (3' each). They are located between the foyer and the living room and the living and dining room. They are painted on the living room side, and have the original stain on the other side.

Here are the ones between the foyer and living room:

Here are the ones between the living room and dining room:

They are currently really hard to pull in and out of the walls. They rub the trim in a few places and a couple of them scratch the hardwood. I noticed that they don't look like they are properly on their upper tracks, some of the pulleys are not engaging, and the locking latch mechanism is painted over on one set. We'll probably try to do some restorative work on them prior to finishing the hardwood floors so that we don't damage the hardwood once it's refinished.

Discoveries about the house

2008-12-30T23:25:00.000-05:00

Just a few notes on some things we've found out in the last couple weeks about the house:

1. There used to be a servant's stair case where the powder room is beside the kitchen. They converted the space into the powder room (probably during the 1940's) and closed up the top of it where it came out onto the main mid-floor landing (where it joined the main stair case). The powder room wasn't properly vented (unfortunately), so the plumbers have added a air-admittance valve (AAV).

2. There used to be a sink in each of the front bedrooms on the second level. These were added after the house was built (we think), again, probably in the 1940's. They were removed at a later date. The plumbing is still intact under the floor and in the walls, and the sinks were properly vented up to the attic.

3. We have hardwood flooring under the kitchen and foyer vinyl floors. We peeled back the vinyl in a couple places, and under some additional linoleum (probably from the 40's or 50's, the hardwood floors from the dining/living areas continue throughout. This bodes well, since we plan on tearing up the vinyl. We've added refinishing the flooring on the main level to the list of things to do before we move in.

4. We found a some old photographs and the original deed for the house. This is pretty exciting, as it gives us some insight into the original owners and the chain of ownership through the years (it appears that there were only 3, possibly 4, owners prior to us. We also know what the original windows looked like on the front of the house before they were replaced with PVC windows. More on these in a future post.

5. The coach house (attached to the school buildings) has a full second level, with floor boards, insulation, and a TON of scrap wood and discarded furniture. We removed some nails holding the second level exterior entrance door closed, used a ladder and went inside to take a look. There is an old tricycle, some doors original to the house (yey!), and just a ton of other junk that was clearly placed there rather than thrown out. We'll get around to clearing it out (someday). There appears to be some raccoon activity in there as well, but I'm not sure if it's recent.

6. The sunroom (was used as an office by PO) has a false ceiling. We planned to re-attach the old radiators in the second level of the sunroom, and the plumbers needed access to the area where the radiator pipes come out in the ceiling of the lower sunroom. We removed a portion of the drop ceiling and discovered another 2 ft of ceiling height and a nice bead-board ceiling above. There are even some transom windows in there that are closed up with insulation that can be cleared out when we get the whole drop ceiling down.

More to come...

New Boiler and Hot Water Heating

2008-12-30T13:27:00.001-05:00

I thought it worth while to put up a brief post on our upcoming hot water boiler replacement.

This is our current boiler:

The home inspector says it's probably around 85 years old. Maybe a bit younger than that. It has BTU ratings for coal, hard -stoked (Anthracite coal), and oil. It was converted to natural gas in 1983. The concrete block half-wall you can see behind the boiler conceals a large (12' x 3' diameter) abandoned oil tank. This was removed prior to closing and the floor and surrounding areas were tested for oil leaks (and came back clean thankfully).

Starting next week, our plumbers (who have been working on our supply and drain lines) will be switching over to getting the new boiler installed. It is a 93% efficient natural gas unit called the NTI-200. It is a condensing and modulating boiler, so it is very efficient and can adjust it's BTU output based on how much heat is needed (usually based on outdoor/indoor tempurature differential), rather than just having on/off modes.

The other nice thing about the new unit is that it will mount on the wall, taking up less space, vent to the outside via small PVC pipes, rather than taking up a chimney flue, and also heat our hot water. We'll be getting a 40 gallon indirect hot water tank. The boiler will heat the water through an indirect heat transfer method, and the water will be stored in the 40 gallon tank. If the hot water gets low, the boiler will fire up and make more, on-demand, up to 5.5 gallons/min, which means more or less infinite hot water. It is considered one of the most efficient methods to heat hot water. The current gas bill for the house is averaged at around $370/month (over the entire year). In addition to the new boiler, the 'extra' furnace in the old school rooms will be shut-down permanently, so we expect to save 30-50% of our gas bill (the 'extra' furnace is a really inefficient model).

I'll post a picture of our new boiler once it's installed.

Progress and Pictures

2008-12-29T22:38:00.000-05:00

Christmas has been busy for us, travelling between Ottawa and Toronto to visit with family and running errands for the new house.

We've planned out the interim kitchen and purchased cabinets and appliances to be delivered in the next week or so. The plumbers have made progress on replacing the supply and drainage pipes for the second floor bathroom. They're starting more work tomorrow and will be busy with the rest of the plumbing and then the heating system work for the next week or two.

As promised, here are some pictures of the house.

Foyer:

Living / Dining Rooms:

Stairs:

Second Floor Den:

As you can see from the photographs, the house has a lot of wood work and other character features. This is what made us fall in love with the house. There are a lot of other parts that aren't as pretty; I'll get some pictures of those up shortly. Stay tuned...

Update and Layout of 1st floor

2008-12-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

Since our last post, we now have a vacant house! The sellers spent most of Sunday with a large crew and many trucks emptying out the main house. They came back and picked up the last of their things on Monday morning.

On Monday, we had an energy audit done. We have a lot of updates planned and wanted the energy audit to be performed as early as possible so that we can apply for grants for our upgrades. Since we're getting a new boiler installed (possibly as early as next week), we needed the energy audit so that we can apply for the $1200 grant from the federal and provincial governments for a high efficiency boiler. The audit didn't reveal any surprises. The blower test couldn't get a proper reading, likely due to the volume of the house and the fact that there are a lot of broken windows. Insulation in the walls is R16-R18, which is great news, and we have room for improvement with insulation in the attic and knee wall spaces. We await the final report from the audit.

On Tuesday, the plumbers arrived and got right to work on removing the galvanized steel water supply piping. They quickly revealed various issues with the plumbing that needed to be resolved, so we've given them the go-ahead to replace/update plumbing. They came back on Wednesday and are done everything except the 2nd floor washroom upgrades to the waste/vent pipes and a bit more galvanized piping removal. They won't be back until Monday now as we have to finish gutting the washroom so they can access all the pipes.

I still haven't taken a lot of photos, but one thing we wanted to post was the layout of the main floor. This is as it was on the day of closing. Here it is:

To explain the above layout, we should mention that the house was at one time owned by one of the local universities (before they were even a university). They ran their original college out of a large building across the street and when their attendence exceeded available space, they purchased several homes in the area and converted them to school buildings. This is why the layout shows the three large additions at the back of the property. The largest of them is the old 2-storey coach house that is likely original to the house. The other two are actually a single structure divided into two classrooms constructed as a single-storey concrete building with flat roof. We haven't decided what to do with them yet, but the water going to those buildings is turned off and the furnace is soon to be turned off.

Potential ideas for those outbuildings are to remove the large coach house (which is in disrepair anyways) and turn that area back into yard space, then convert the other building into a garage (on the right hand side) and other space (family room, workshop, etc...?) on the left-side. The fact that plumbing and heating exists in that space is a bonus, as long as we leave the connections in place until we decide what to do with them. Whatever we do, it will take some thinking, because as soon as we remove them, we can't rebuild other structures (such as a garage) in the same place since the buildings are right on the lot lines and we'd have to apply for variances.

I'll post some pictures of the empty house shortly.

2008-12-13T18:16:00.001-05:00

Well, we visited the house last night and much to our dismay, the previous owners had not taken all of their belongings out of the house yet. Probably around 60% of their stuff was still in the house. We met with our real estate agent and then talked to the sellers. They've agreed to remove everything by 6pm Sunday.

So, after visiting the house today, we didn't do much other than take some measurements and do some investigation. We created a hole in a closet on the 3rd floor to get access to the attic space. We wanted to have access for Monday, as we're having an energy audit done and one of the things they look at is attic insulation. We have about 1-2" of loose fill insulation, it looks wool or an older variant of fibre glass. The good news is that we don't appear to have any vermiculite insulation up there.

Also, we made a small hole in the wall in a room on the second floor to determine if our house is a brick veneer over wood framing, or if it's a double-brick structure. After removing a very small section of plaster and lathe and making a small hole in some thin paper, we discovered that there is wood strapping over what looks like a barn board material. I used a 1.5" hole drilling attachment on my drill and exposed the same loose fill insulation that is in the attic. That fills a cavity behind the barn board that is probably 1" thick. Then more barn board. We left it there, we're not sure if there's double brick or not behind there. The cavity doesn't seem thick enough for framing and I doubt they'd have two layers of framing. I'll do more investigation tomorrow.

We also figured out the location of the gas lines, and how we might put in a small laundry room in an old sunroom off the kitchen, and how to rework the kitchen to make it usable. We still haven't made any decisions but this is all part of the process.

Lastly, we discovered a tile floor section in front of the chimney bulkhead in a second floor room. It appears that at one time, they had a working fireplace there that was removed. We might consider putting one back on.

I refrained from taking photos of the interior as I wanted to wait until the house was empty. I'll take some more tomorrow, provided that the sellers have removed everyting by then.

Welcome!

2008-12-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

This is the first post of our new house blog. We have just closed on our new house today. I'll have more pictures after we get into the house tomorrow, but for now, here's a shot of the outside.

We're having difficultly deciding on exactly the style of the house. We know it was built around 1915. It's mostly brick as you can see, but has some Tudor style wood and render in various places on the exterior.

We were drawn to the house by the (never-painted) trim-work on the inside, the size of the house, and the challenge of restoring and updating an old home such as this. I'll post pictures shortly of some of the historical elements.

There is lots to do, and some things to undo. The house has an interesting history which we'll post more of soon as well. We hope you will join us in following our journey as we renovate our new home.