Removal of the 2nd floor porch roof

Wow, a month since I posted last! That doesn't mean that there hasnt been any work going on here though. Just the opposite, I've been so busy working on the house that I havent had time to post. I'm going to have to break it all up into a few posts.

We FINALLY tackled the long awaited the 2nd floor porch roof demo! Here are a few pics of the work from a few weeks ago:








The last picture is as of yesterday, as you can see it makes a HUGE difference. The next task for the porch is ripping the second floor deck off completely and rebuilding a smaller one that will match the porch below.

I refinished our porch swing using a red chestnut stain and 2 coats of poly. We picked it up at a thrift store last year for $20:


We got some new furniture for the living room. Sorry for the blurry pictures, it's time for a new camera:



It's all jammed against the wall for now because of the pool table. We're selling the table though so hopefully it should be gone soon.

That's all I have time to post for now. I'll try to make another post some some of the other work that's been accomplished in the morning.

Living room complete!

The living room is finally done, well not done but done enough. We primered and painted the other day.

Primer

After primering, I painted all the trim then did all the cut work for the walls:


Then I painted the walls:




We then spent the better part of the day getting the room organized:







Obviously, there is still a lot left to do. The TV in the corner is temporary until we get our flat panel, it will go above the mantle. The corner that the TV is in now will have a wingback chair and side table.

Living room wall patching and new porch look.

Yesterday afternoon was spent patching the living room walls. The first thing I had to do was fix all the holes I made when running the wire for the lights.

I took some scrap lathing and cut it into short strips and placed it in the hole using my nailgun to secure it to the lathing around the hole.


Then I cut 1/2" drywall to fit in the hole and screwed it in place.

Here are all the holes covered and ready for mud.

And here they are mudded.

After the holes were patched I patched all the cracks in the rest of the room. As I've mentioned before I'm using drywall mud mixed with play sand. It gives it a texture very similar to plaster and blends in well with the existing plaster.


Unfortunately today I have other things I have to take care of so I doubt I'll get a chance to sand and primer today.

I've come up with a redesign of the front porch, originally it was just a one story porch but at some point a second story porch was added. The second story porch is horribly done with just 4x4 posts, 2x4 joists, and plywood floors. I had thought of removing the second story porch but we really love sitting up there in the evenings.

So I took a picture of the house, played around with a few ideas and came up with this:


I think it keeps with the style of the house nicely and gives us our second story porch to sit on in the evenings. This style of porch was actually popular in this area so it keeps with the period look.

I probably wont get to this project this year, it will have to be something I take on after the rest of the house is finished.

Living room mantle and electrical

Work on the living room has gone slower than anticipated... imagine that. Stripping the mantle took almost the entire day Saturday.


unfortunately the tiger oak veneer on the front edge of the mantle was in such bad shape that I had to remove it. The wood underneath is oak but it's very rough and it's not quarter-sawn so I'll probably have to get some new oak veneer.

Sunday was almost entirely taken up with rewiring the lighting. The original knob and tube was shoved back up into the ceiling at some point and metal conduit run along the ceiling and down the wall.


The light switch wasn't even by the door to the hallway. When the house was apartments the little door in the above picture was the entrance to this room, it is a small closet that connects to the study. These two rooms, along with the main bathroom and the laundry room were one apartment.

So anyways, the conduit had to go. Running the new wire from the fixture in the ceiling and down the wall was a pain. I had to cut a lot of holes in the wall to run it.


The rest of the day sunday was spent finishing up all the scraping of the walls and ceiling.



Hopefully I can patch everything today then sand and paint tomorrow. For the trim I've decided to try my hand at faux graining. The living room needs to get done fast and I dont have time to remove all of the paint from the trim.

A nice surprise

The living room has finally been cleared out and I have begun the task of scraping the walls.


Once the walls are scraped I need to run some romex for the chandelier and light switch. Then I can begin patching all the cracks.

The wood shed is pretty full now. I need to make a few shelves so I can stack all my wood so I can fit more in there.


Now that all the large pieces are in I need to put the last wall up.

I made a very nice discovery while scraping yesterday. I decided to scrape some of the paint off the mantle, I was expecting pine but what I found is so much better.


That's Tiger Oak! The entire mantle is tiger oak veneer. Somewhere along the way some genius decided to put nails in the top part of the veneer on the face. I should be able to repair that though. I just dont understand how someone could have just painted over these mantles.


The mantle is Empire style. The ones in the Parlor and formal dining room are also Empire style but they have the more common curves on the legs of the mantle. I decided to check those to see what was under the paint:

Formal Dining Room

Parlor

Both are also Tiger Oak! The mantle in the parlor appears to be solid tiger oak, not veneer like the others. They should look great once they are refinished.

Living room cleanup

I've been working on clearing out the storage room... sorry... the living room since Sunday and I'm still not finished. It is almost completed though so it will be done by tonight. Then I can start scraping, patching, and rewiring.

Here is a picture of the room after almost a full day of working on it:


I really wish I had gotten a picture of the room before I started, you literally couldn't walk into the room it was so full. The above shot was taken after I had filled two full sized rolling trash cans, two full sized rolling recycle cans, removed almost all my tools, sorted into boxes all kinds of miscellaneous parts like electrical, plumbing, screws, nails, and bolts, and removed 2 large piles of left over flooring.

This next picture was as of monday:

I had to de-nail all the wood I removed so that I could stack it cleanly in the wood shed. This took a lot of time. I'm also having to cut up all the scrap wood so it will fit into contractor bags. I'm having to throw everything out with the regular trash since I cant afford another dumpster.

Here is the room as of last night, as you can see it shouldn't take long to finish emptying it.


I really hope that I can get this room painted by the weekend, all that purple is starting to hurt my eyes!

Pole Shed part 3 and the living room

The pole shed is about done except for the last wall panel, trim, and paint. I'm thinking barn red. I'm waiting until I finish putting all the large pieces in the shed before I put up the last panel.




The living room and the main guest room have been our storage areas for almost as long as we've been in the house. We are finally getting these two rooms cleared out and moving everything into the shed. So far I've moved about 22 doors and 20 sets of windows into the shed along with a lot of wood.

As soon as the living room is completely empty I'll begin on the scraping and patching of the walls and ceiling. They're in decent shape so I expect to have the room painted before the weekend. I'll post some pics of the room in the next post.

Weekend salvage trip

Well our trip to the farmhouse for wood was pretty productive. We ended up getting a ton of T&G wood, some more doors, and 11 sets of nice old windows that we plan on using for our sunroom addition.

Here's a shot of the farmhouse:


Here's some of the wood we brought back:



We spent roughly 9 hours there yesterday, plus a 2 hour drive each way. It was a looooong day. It was well worth it though. Now I definitely have enough wood to finish the walls in the kitchen.

Here is a shot of just about the only productive work I accomplished today (I was still tired... plus the race was on):


As you can see I'm planing the boards first now. That should save some time later during sanding.

I also finally got around to pulling the last old closet out of the living room. This closet appears to be older than the other one that was in this room. It looks like it was installed in the 50's during the apartment conversion. I had a nice surprise whan I took it down:




Original paint and stain!! This has been hidden in the dark since the 50's. The stain is a deep red, it almost looks like paint until you look close. I'd really like to know what stain it is, I like the look and would love to duplicate it. Here's a closer shot:


I find it really odd that the fireplace mantle juts out beyond the end of the wall like this:


The only other house I have seen where the mantle does this is in the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife house, you can see a very similar setup of it in this picture. That house belonged to Doc Holliday's uncle and was built in 1855. It's about 40 minutes from my house.

Well I guess that's all for tonight, hopefully there will be some good progress tomorrow.

Jason