Hall Tree

This is a small project we worked on last year but never completed. It sat in the Laundry room since then. Recently I moved it out into the Breakfast room and then just yesterday added the hooks to finally finish it off.

It's a Hall tree made from a heavy old door from a textile mill and some old, reclaimed boards. The seat lifts up for storage underneath.


In other house news, I've been working on stripping the stair railings, it's slow, boring work. I also added some low-voltage lighting to the front yard. No pictures of either project yet.

Building the second floor deck

I didnt get as much done over the weekend as I'd hoped but progress was still made. Saturday morning I got back to work. First I installed flashing in the deck area:
Once that was secure I installed the beaded wood siding to the porch roof. I still need to add some flashing to the top, I'll cover it with trim:

Next I sealed the tin floor with an aluminum and tar mix that I found in the roofing section of Lowes:

And then installed the 1x6 decking:

The next day I got to work on designing a railing. I had a newel post from the stairs of the old Anderson house, plus the cap to a second newel post. I was able to dig up enough wood and matching trim to build a second post just like the first:


The one on the right is the original, the one on the left is the one I built.

I sanded and primered them and installed them on the deck. I also installed the railing. I have about a dozen spindles left over from the railing I built for the first floor but it wont be enough, I'll have to get some more.

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.

More on the pole shed

Yesterday I started building the walls for the pole shed. The shed will have two windows and one or possibly two doors. One door will be a 3' door at the end of the shed for bringing large objects in. The other door will be on the side if I decide to install it.

The walls are vertically grooved plywood supported by pressure treated 2x4's. The windows are salvaged upper panes. I'm installing them on their side with hinges so they will swing out. The floor will be pallets for now but I may install plywood down the road.

Pole Shed

I've spent the last few days building a pole barn. I have a lot of salvaged wood, windows, and doors sitting in the living room and first guest bedroom. I need to get these rooms cleared out so I can begin working on them. The pole barn will house all of my salvaged material.

I found a level spot in the back yard for it and cleared it out. The barn will be 8x12 in size so I guess it's more of a pole shed than a barn. The inside ceiling height will be close to 9'.

I began by laying out the footprint with string tied to stakes. I made sure it was square by using a drywall square and a 4' level then checked it with the 3-4-5 string method. To do this you make a mark on one of the strings 3' from the corner, and 4' down on the other string then you measure between both marks. The measurement has to be exactly 5' for the corner to be square.

With that done I marked out the locations of the posts and began digging the holes.


I dont know about you but digging post holes by hand in 102 degree weather is not fun.

after all the holes were dug I cemented the poles in place making sure each was perfectly level on both sides.


The next step was to install the headers. These are what the roof trusses will sit on.


After installing the headers I began building the roof trusses. These were fairly simple to build. I used spiked metal mending plates on each side to hold the trusses together. I then installed the trusses on the header roughly 2' on center using hurricane straps.

Next I installed the purlins across the roof trusses. these tie the trusses together and gives you something to screw the tin to.


Next came the tin for the roof. The tin is galvanized, I'll probably paint it green or red. I screwed it to the purlins with steel screws with neoprene washers so it wont leak.



Left to do is the ridge cap for the roof, the face boards on the truss ends, a few windows, a door, and the walls. I'll be using the windows and doors that I have on hand. The plywood for the walls is going to be the most expensive part, costing from $150 to $250. I guess I should mention that I've only spent less than $200 so far.

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.

Kitchen ceiling done!

A lot was accomplished over the long weekend. I didn't quite get everything done that was on the schedule but it was still a very productive weekend. Scheduling the project out has really been a fantastic help. there is no way I would have gotten as much done as I did without it.

Guest bedroom number 2 was first on the list. This room was easily in the best shape of all the bedrooms. That's not saying that there wasn't a lot of work to be done though. First I had to move everything out of the room. Both guest bedrooms have been storerooms for the last 9 months. Instead of just dumping everything in guest bedroom number 1 I decided to organize it first. There was a lot of wood scraps and trash in there from using the room as a woodshop. Once it was organized and everything was moved over I scraped and sanded the walls. Once that was done I patched the bad parts of the walls with my usual mixture of drywall mud and sand.




I still have to patch a few small areas and sand. Hopefully the walls will be primered by tonight. We haven't picked out a color for the room yet either. We hope to have this room, the breakfast room, the foyer, and maybe the laundry room painted by this weekend.

The next project and one I've been avoiding for many months now was the kitchen ceiling. Over the last 4 months or so I made every excuse I could think of to not start on it. Once I finally did start it I finished in 2 days and it wasn't all that hard.



There are 2 parts to the ceiling, the part on the left in the first picture is underneath the upstairs guest bathroom. the part to the right is a fairly large attic space. I plan on making an access door from the guest bathroom into the space to use for storage.

I used R-19 for the part of the ceiling under the bathroom. R-30 will go down on the other part after I demo the upstairs guest bathroom walls. The wood is salvaged wood that I got last year before we even got the house. I laid alternating rows of 7" and 9" boards.



Most of the boards are pretty dirty so I'm going to scrub them down and then use some type of wood treatment on them like Murphy's oil soap. I might do a very light sanding and light coat of poly but I doubt it, I really like the patina of the boards as they are.

I also got a lot of small projects taken care of that had needed to get done for a while now. I installed the dryer vent in the laundry room. Everytime we would run the dryer it would become a sauna in the room, great when it's 30 degrees out, not so great when it's almost 90 out.

I installed the HVAC vent in the breakfast room now that the floor is down. Unfortunately I didn't get to hook it up to the system because the HVAC guys left the wrong sized ducting for me. On payday I'll be buying 6" ducting so I can hook it up. The back of the house gets hotter than the front because of the lack of the vent, the lack of the dryer vent, and because we didn't have the ceiling in the kitchen.


I finally moved the stove outlet to where it needed to go. It was directly between the cabinet I built and the stove, creating a large gap between the two. I moved it to under the stove, now both the stove and the cabinet are centered underneath the cabinets above them.


I also painted the little metal bistro set we got for free last year, it was painted some bright purple color. We're using it on our brick patio until we get a larger patio set, either wood or wrought iron.


I even had time to help Heather build her bird feeder for the back yard.


Next on my list will be to finish Guest bedroom 1, finish the Foyer, and finish the last kitchen cabinet then paint all of them. I hope to have all this done in the next couple of days.