2nd floor porch, new front door.

Work has been progressing slowly but I have gotten some work done. I finally finished rebuilding the second floor porch. There were two very small areas that were leaking but they were letting a ton of water in. This has caused some of the beadboard on the first floor porch ceiling to come off. Great, another project.



While I was fixing the leaks I made a design change that had been bothering me ever since I first built it. In the picture below notice the 2x4's running left to right, they are what the decking attaches to:


Notice anything wrong with this setup? There's nowhere for the water to drain! It will get between the floor boards then be trapped behind the 2x4's. I don't know what I was thinking when I did this. It's a really stupid mistake. This wasn't what caused the leak but water would have pooled and eventually caused rot.

The way I fixed this was to pull up the 2x4's, take some 6' fence panels and rip them in half lengthwise to make 8 6'x3"x3/4" pieces, then lay them front to back. Then I placed the 2x4's on top of them. Now the water can drain. Sorry I didn't get a picture of it but I think I described it clearly.

Anyways, while I had the 2x4's up I took the time to add another layer of some heavy duty roof cement to the sub floor. I also used a ton of roofing caulk wherever I thought it might be a possible leak area. We got a good bit of rain the next day after I did this and no leaks!

I went ahead and primered and painted the railings before I reinstalled them since it's much easier that way. Here's a few shots of the completed second floor porch:




I went out on the porch roof this morning to get these next two pictures without realizing that there was ice on the roof! Of course I didn't slip until I was about 8 steps out and turning around to take the pic. That could have been bad...


One of the things I did a few months back that I never got around to posting is the Dining room mantle. This is how it looked when we first got the place:

This is as far as I got on it last Winter:

I finished scraping the paint off of it then sanded it 3 times with progressively smoother sandpaper. Here it is after the final sanding:

Then I applied 2 coats of amber shellac:


I still have to scrape the paint off the tiles, repair the hearth tiles, and put up oak trim around the hearth (the original was removed for the 70's shag carpet).

We found a beautiful door at a flea market out in Alabama last month. We picked it up for $50! It's a wonderful Victorian door with a purplish glass inset. In the pic below I'm test fitting it into place. I had to trim about 1" off the bottom:

The mortise for the lock was on the wrong side, I would have just hung the door the opposite way but I've already installed all the light switches on the left side of the door. The outside of the door is different so I couldn't just flop the door around. So I had to make a new mortise on the other side of the door and fill in the old one. I took heavy paper towels and packed them in the mortise as hard as I could then used wood putty to fill in the rest.

Cutting out the new mortise by hand was a real pain in the ass! I used a drill bit of the same diameter as the mortise lock and a chisel. Old school... I also had to cut out the area for the hinges and fill in the area where the hinges were.

There were also a lot of small holes where things had been nailed into the door over the years and even a 9" long chunk of the edge that had come off. Also someone had gouged a rough hole in the door for an old doorbell at one point. All this had to be repaired. Once it was repaired I installed the hardware, I used the door hardware off my old door. Here is a shot of the test fit after all this was done:

Then I put on a coat of amber shellac and a coat of satin poly:



I think the wood putty is a bit too noticeable where the old door knob and door bell had been. I may strip those areas, stain the wood putty to match the rest of the door then re-shellac and poly it.

Antique Toilet for sale

I've decided to sell my antique toilet I bought a few years ago. It's a really nice embossed Victorian style toilet made in 1902 by T. R. & Co. The tank is oak and finished in amber shellac. All the internals are original except for the flush valve.

I hate to sell it but with the medical issues I've been having lately I could use the cash.

I've put it up on E-bay for those of you that may be interested.

Final closing!

This is a little late in coming but on December 14th we finally closed on our permanent mortgage for the house. No more construction loan! It's been a long year and a half.

We're still far from finished on the house but it's nice to be able to work on what I want now instead of what I feel HAS to be done to get the mortgage. Most of the things I have been working on are small jobs but it's the detail work that usually makes the most difference and makes the place look more like a real home and not a construction zone.

I've finished up a few things in the kitchen. First I finally hung the second pendant light and got both of them wired up.

In the above picture you can also see that I finished the doors for the final cabinet. I still need to add the crown for this cabinet and one other and then the crown for the ceiling.

The breakfast nook is slowly progressing, I have everything roughed in now. I also finally put the window trim and shutters back up, I still have to paint them though. the ceiling in the nook still needs to be installed also.

Next I stained the kitchen island and added the little magnetic door poppers to the insides of the doors. I still need to build the shelf inside though.


In the study I finally tackled the door to the closet/passage to the living room. The door was a 5 paneled door that did not match anything else in the house. You can see the door below in this picture from a few months ago.


On the first floor every other door is 4 paneled. A while back I had taken the door between the back hall and breakfast room down, we didnt like how it closed off the space. I measured this door and found that it fit perfectly. You can see the door in the picture below.

I completely stripped all the paint off the door and door frame then hung the door. Next I installed the beadboard on the wall next to the door.

I stained the doorway and beadboard with dark walnut. For the door I only put on 2 coats of amber shellac.

I still need to add the trim around the doorway. I also stained the beadboard on another section of wall.


I only have one more small section of beadboard to install then 3 more sections to stain. I still need to install the picture rail also.

While I was in the Study I decided to open up the fireplace to see what I would find.

The above picture was after cleaning all the sand, leaves and soot out. One thing I found interesting was the bricks that line the fireplace, many are stamped with the word "STEVENS" but the letter N is backwards. I'm pretty sure this is the name of the company that made them but I havent been able to find out anything about them. If anyone knows anything about them I'd love to hear about it. Here is a picture of one of the bricks.

Of the many spare doors I have some are french doors, I found that one of these was an almost perfect match for the doorway between the back hall and breakfast room. We took the 4 panel door down from here because we felt like it closed off the space but a french door wont. It also gives the breakfast room a sunroom kind of feel.

I cut the door down to size, sanded it and test fit it into place. I had to rework the door frame a little for it to fit properly.





As you can see the door is only primed for now. Also the door hardware is only test fitted into place. I still need to restore the lock and rosette. I also need to install a "new" pane of glass in the opening on the bottom.

Build a clawfoot tub shower ring for under $20

We've been forced to take baths for almost a year and a half now. I finally got fed up with that and decided to put together a shower. the shower kits online at these restoration places are expensive as hell so I decided to see if I could put together the parts myself. At this point we just need to get things working, later on when we have more time and money we can go back and put in the nicer, more expensive plumbing parts.

My original intention was to get the tub in the master bath working. I bought a shower riser for around $40, a set of supply lines for $20, two cut-off valves for around $8, and a PVC drain assembly for $14. I painted the PVC drain with the same bronze paint that I painted the clawfeet.


I already had an old tub faucet that was already in the tub.


I put everything together but had a problem with the faucet. The internals were rotted away so I couldnt shut the water all the way off. I looked online for another tub faucet that has a shower flange. I found one for $30 but it was hideous.

The tub in the downstairs bathroom is the only currently running tub. I took the gooseneck faucet off and found that the shower riser would fit with an adapter.


The only thing I needed now is a shower ring. Looking online I found them to be fairly expensive, $150 to well over $400.

A few weeks before we were looking through an old house for sale that had a shower ring in one of their bathrooms. Looking at it closely I discovered that they are constructed out of common parts that you can find at any home improvement store.

I went to Lowes and began searching for the right combination of parts. 1/2 electrical conduit was perfect, light, easily bendable, paintable, and cheap. I knew I would need some type of "T" to connect the ends to the wall and ceiling. I found a 1/2 cast iron "T" in plumbing that was perfect. I could have had the ends of the conduit threaded to fit the "T" but that didnt occur to me until after I had built it, and in the end I like it better the way it turned out anyways. Instead I found a 1/2 coupling that was threaded on one end and a compression fitting on the other. the last part I found was a 1/2 galvanized floor flange, I would use this to connect the ring to the wall and ceiling.

Parts list:

• 2 - 10' lengths of 1/2" electrical conduit - $1.98 ea
  
• 2 - 1/2" cast iron "T" connectors - $.98 ea
  
• 6 - 1/2" compression connectors - $.54 ea
  
• 2 - 1/2" Floor flanges - $2.97 ea
  

From the left; 1/2" "T" - 1/2" Compression/threaded connector - 1/2" Floor flange

First I cut the both pieces of conduit down to 81"


then I put each end in the pipe bender leaving 5 5/8" overhanging the edge.



This gave me an overall length of 61" once both ends were bent to 90 degrees.


Then I screwed the compression connectors onto either side of the "T" connector.


Then I slid the ends of the conduit into the connectors and tightened them down. The front connector I pointed forward towards the wall, the back connector I pointed up to the ceiling.

I measured the shower curtain so I could find how long the bar that attaches to the ceiling needed to be, in my case 28". For this piece I went ahead and used a 28" piece of galvanized pipe threaded at both ends. One end threads into the "T" connector, the other end into the floor flange. On the front end I used the compression connectors and a very short piece of conduit.

Back connector

Front connector

The above pictures were taken as I was test fitting everything into place. Once I knew everything fit I took it all down to paint the ring. I used the same bronze paint since this ring will eventually go in the upstairs master bathroom. I'm not going to have a shower in the main bathroom, only in the master and guest baths.



You may have noticed that this ring is a bit big for the tub. This is a 5' tub, both tubs upstairs are 5 1/2' so it should fit perfectly. Once I get a tub faucet for upstairs I will move the ring and shower riser upstairs. For now it's nice to have a shower again.

Study built in bookcases and main bath vanity

Even though I havent posted any updates in a few weeks I've been pretty busy on the house. We also had to get the house ready for the big cookout on the 4th. It's hard to entertain guests in a construction zone. It turned out great though.

After finishing the deck last week I turned my attention to building the bookshelves in the Study. In this post I mentioned how I was going to use some of the front porch columns from the old Anderson house in the design. Unfortunately I didn't have enough salvaged 1x12 stock for the rest of the bookcase so I've had to use some new wood, worse yet it's not even Southern yellow pine, it's white pine. Lowes and Home Depot dont carry 1x12's in Southern yellow pine except for a few special pieces. I hate white pine but in the end I really dont think it will matter all that much. The bookcase is going to be stained dark walnut and very little of the white pine boards will be exposed once the books are in. The two main columns in the center are what will show the most and they are the old columns from the Anderson house, the two outside columns are a mix of older and new white pine but only 2" of their face shows, I'll probably do a faux grain on the face of them. Most of the shelves are white pine with the exception of the shelves that are directly above where the doors will be, those are Southern yellow pine.




I still need to build the top portion that will connect the two bookcases.

The other main project I worked on was the main bathroom vanity. We found this vanity totally by accident. We found some free old doors on Craigslist over a year ago. When we went and picked them from the couple that was giving them away their neighbor just happened to stop by. We got into a conversation about how we loved antique furniture and how we were in the process of searching for an old house that we could restore. He mentioned that he had some old furniture in his shop that he had intended to restore but had never gotten around to it and offered to give the pieces to us. He ended up giving us the vanity (an oak dresser), an old gas stove from the early 20's, and a very old, ornate victorian love seat (just the frame actually). He found the dresser on the curb years back about to be picked up by the trash truck.


Not much to look at but I knew that it could be fixed up very nicely. Once we got this house I knew it would be perfect for a bathroom vanity.

I stripped all the ugly brown paint off of it and stained it with a combination of mostly english chestnut and a little red mahogany and then polyed it.





We found the mirror frame in an antique store in Alabama, I have an old mirror that I need to get cut down to fit it. The sink is hand painted in Mexico and the faucet is brushed copper from Nottingham brass. I've already rebuilt the two top drawers to fit around the sink. The brace between the second and third drawers go will be removed. Then I'll biscuit join the drawer fronts together and cut them in half vertically to make two swing open doors. I still have to find some nice brass hardware for them.