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.

Punch list work

I know I never made a follow-up post on the exterior house painting but it will have to wait a while longer. I completed what I had to get done with the scaffolding so I could return it but that was it. I still have a lot of the back of the house to complete as well as about 3 feet of the bottom on both sides.

The reason I didnt finish is because we wanted to get our new (old) Airstream in usable condition so we could go on a small vacation. Now that we're back it's time to get this house finished already.

I had intended on coming back and removing the second story porch roof and then finish up the painting but I've decided to hold off on that for a few weeks until I have some help. It will go much faster that way. So in the mean time I decided to create a punch list of little things around the house that need to get done and have begun working on that.


I've been concentrating on the front of the house the past few days, mainly the foyer and the study. I finished staining the beadboard in the study but dont have any good pictures yet. I should be putting a coat of poly on it this afternoon.

I have begun work on the mantle in the study also. Most of the mantle is brick but it has a pine top piece. I stripped the 20 layers of paint off of it yesterday:


I will be shellacing it this afternoon. I've decided to find a brick red paint color and paint the brick for a few reasons. One, the paint is very hard to remove but also the brick underneath it is cement so it's gray, not red. I may try to paint the mortar lines gray then paint the brick red and then sponge it to make it look more realistic.

I've also been trying to finish the trim in the foyer. You may remember that the wall between the foyer and study was not original and was crooked so I tore it down and rebuilt it straight, giving the foyer an extra foot.

The old wall covered the edge of the front door frame so I used some of my salvaged trim to replace the missing pieces. This trim came from the upstairs bathroom and is the original trim design for the house so it matches the rest of the foyer:


I know I should have painted it first but I like to do stuff backwards. Besides, the door frame needed a touch-up coat of paint anyways.

By the way, the plywood is over the front door because the glass broke in the door. I'm sure replacing it is going to be costly.

Next I installed the picture rail on the new wall:


I've also installed the upper trim on the baseboards but still have to install the 1/4 round at the bottom of the baseboards. Once I do that and install the trim on the study doorway and paint everything the foyer will be completely done... well except for the broken glass in the front door that is.

Previous owner's relatives visit

We haven't gotten much done on the house for a number of reasons. One of them being the new TV we got:




It's a 47" Westinghouse with full 1080P HD. The picture is incredible. It's $700 or $800 cheaper than anything else in it's class. I got it for $1299 from Best Buy. I fully recommend it to anyone in the market for a flat panel LCD.

We had a visit from the relatives of the former owner of the house, Hazel. I've mentioned her in the blog before, she lived to be almost 105 and owned the house since 1955 when she inherited it from her 2 aunts, Helen and Kitty-Clyde. They inherited the house in 1945.

The relatives brought some old photos of them over for us. I gave them a tour of the house and showed them all of the progress we've made, they seemed impressed with the work done so far. Here are a few pictures they brought:

Hazel in front of the house

Helen

Kitty-Clyde

Helen with her husband

They also brought some photos of the front porch after a car hit it back in 2001. A man that was a convicted felon got into a fight then shot at someone that tried to break it up. He then car-jacked a vehicle and didnt get 2 blocks away before losing control and crashing into the front of the house. I've found some evidence of this a few months ago when I was planting new bushes in front of the porch. I dug up what appears to be a front fender reflector and some safety glass that probably came from the drivers window.



In anticipation of their visit we rearranged and straightened up many of the rooms in the house. We completely rearranged the Parlor:



The Buggy is a recent find that we got free off Freecycle.





I'm hoping to get back to work on the house soon.

Paint

We spent the entire weekend painting. On Saturday we painted the shutters and the front porch railing.




We're thinking about possibly leaving the house white when we repaint instead of the pale olive we were originally thinking of. I think white will look a lot better with the upcoming redo of the front porch I mentioned in a previous post.

I also painted the wicker furniture on Saturday, the loveseat and table were unpainted but were looking very washed out, the chair was a hideous blue (we found it at a thrift store for $3):


Sunday was spent painting inside, first we painted all the trim in the Foyer and the back hall, then I painted the foyer:



I still need to finish installing the picture rail and figure out what I'm going to do with the entryway to the Study (on the right in the picture), the entire study is stained a dark walnut so making the transition from antique white paint to stain is difficult. I'm thinking of just staining the entire Study entryway.

The door in the picture leads to the back hall and will most likely be replaced with a salvaged french door. Eventually I will remove the door, widen the opening and add some columns to create a wide open passageway from the foyer to the back hall. I dont have the front door pictured because I still need to strip it entirely and refinish it.

We still have to paint the walls of the back hall. We will hopefully finish that today so I can move back upstairs to the master bathroom and finish it off.

Big changes

A lot has changed since the last post. I went back to the bank, got a 6 month extension and also got more money. This will allow me to get all the things I need done quickly as well as add a few other things. This extended my project time by over a month but I believe it's well worth it. A few of the things added to the list is a deck, rebuild of the front porch, painting the house, and plumbing upgrades.

The other day I finished painting the second guest bedroom. I used the same blue that we used in the dining room.




Sorry about all the spots, there was dust on the camera lens. The trim still needs to be painted and we still have to figure out what to do with the fireplace and doors, paint them or poly them.

I started hanging the pendant lights in the kitchen. Only one of them are up at this point, I should do the other one today or tomorrow.


Over the weekend we tackled the front porch. The wrought iron railings were ok but we really wanted wood baulisters and railings. In the shot below you can see the old iron railings, they appear to have been put in sometime in the 40's or 50's:


I removed the iron railings (we're going to use them in our garden) then built and installed the new railings in a day.



The baulisters are $2.29 from Lowes but they didn't have hand rails long enough so I had to make my own our of 2x4's. I put a bevel on either side of the top railing as you can see in the above picture.

The top rails are anchored into the wood portion of the column. The bottom rails had to be anchored into the brick.I used a Forstner bit on the bottom rail about 2" from the edge then used a 3/8's bit to create a channel to the edge of the board. Then I drilled a 3/8's hole in the brick and installed an anchor bolt. Then I brought the bottom rail up from underneath and thghtened the bolts. The hole will be covered with a small piece of board. I forgot to take a picture of this but you should be able to see it in the above picture. If anyone has any questions on it I can take a picture of it later and post it.

I will be rebuilding the second floor porch. We still haven't decided how we want it though. Once we do it will have balisters like the 1st floor just a bit thinner though.

The next project is the shutters. We decided on board & batten style since it's easy to build. I'm using 1" thick 1x4's and 1x6's to build them.


Once we paint the house the shutters will either be black or dark green. the house itself will be some type of pale green or olive and the trim will be an off white.

Next I'll be finishing off the shutter for the front of the house, painting the Foyer, installing the other pendant light then starting the demo for the old porch so I can begin the deck.