Sinks, landscaping, and more bricks

We got lucky and had another day to haul off bricks from the Anderson house. In our first load the other day we got 349 bricks. On our second load the night before last we got 396.

This is the first load of bricks

This is the second load

Along with the bricks we got a few stair treads (we have 2 broken ones on our stairs), the downstairs newel post, 3 window weights, and some random trim. They started loading everything up and hauling it away yesterday. We didn't have time to go back last night because we were busy planting the trees we got on our trip to Alabama over the weekend. Hopefully the crew wont work today because of the holiday and I'll be able to get some more bricks this afternoon.

As I mentioned we went to Alabama over the weekend and picked up a lot of trees. We got dogwoods (pink, white, and red), flowering crabapples (pink and white), and Crape Myrtles(white, pink, purple, and red). Some of them we picked up at a fleamarket for very good prices( the dogwoods are 6' and we got them for $8 each, the Crape Myrtles are 4' and they were $3 each), the rest we got from my girlfriends grandparents farm. We went out in the woods and found a lot of white dogwoods and pink and white crabapples. These needed to be planted ASAP since their roots were just sitting in water. we also got a lot of flowering bushes but those wont be planted until after this cold front passes.

These are the 2 dogwoods we planted in the front yard. The back right one is a white, the front left one is a pink.



Another reason for going to Alabama was to go to a place called Dixie Salvage. They carry builders overstock. I bought a wall cabinet for the kitchen (42"x30" oak face, solid plywood sides for $80). We also found 3 sinks there for our bathroom vanities, 2 for the double vanity in the master bathroom, and the 3rd for the main downstairs bathroom. The sinks are handpainted in Mexico. I wasn't sure about the design of them first but now I kind of like them.


The faucet is one we got from vintage tub, the handles have small extensions to raise them up by about 2" but I didn't have them installed for the picture. Everything is test fitted into place, I still have to refinish the vanity before I can permanently install everything.

We also found a faucet for our kitchen sink, it's brushed copper made by Kingston Brass, it was $50!


Hopefully when I get home this afternoon I can make another trip to the Anderson House for more bricks, if there's anything left that is.

Final update on the Anderson House

See the posts here and here for the first 2 parts of this story.

I was out of town for the weekend. I came back yesterday to find that the demolition of the Anderson House had begun. They were removing the windows and other asbestos containing materials from the house. The windows were wrapped in heavy gray plastic and thrown unceremoniously into a dumpster on the site. Most of the glass shattered from them being thrown. Even so, I had to restrain myself from raiding the dumpster last night. Everyone knows how badly I wanted the windows, the asbestos cops would have been at my house in no time.


I went by there today to see about getting some other things from the house, turns out they were about to start the actual demolition of the house right when I arrived.

It took just over 2 minutes to tear all the additions down.

Then he started in on the main part of the house:




All in all the entire demolition took about 15 minutes... the house stood for 101 years.

I went back this evening to salvage some bricks. I found 3 columns that were salvageable and a door. It's the white one pictured above with half the house torn down. It has an Eastlake rosette and keyhole cover.




That's close to 400 bricks in the picture above. There are still thousands left but unfortunately it got dark on me. Most everything will be gone by the time I get off work today. What really sucks is that this whole time, for the last 4 months, I could have been salvaging all of the other things in the house.I just didn't realize, I thought I had to have something concrete, in writing. Now I see that as long as it wasn't asbestos, it didn't matter.

I learned a pretty hard lesson today, in situations like this it's better to just take then try and ask for something. Every single person I talked to in my long fight for the windows didn't care if I took them, they just didn't want to be responsible. So they passed the buck on to someone else. I spoke with everyone from bank presidents to attorneys, architects to contractors. Everyone passed the buck. If I would have just taken them months ago no one would have missed them, no one would have cared. Now another piece of history is gone.

More work on the kitchen cabinets

I've been working on the kitchen cabinets for the past few days. I spent yesterday building the doors for the cabinets that are already installed.



I also installed the cabinet and counter top next to the fridge. This is temporary as I hate the cabinet and will be building a new one in it's place.


Today I tackled the dishwasher cabinet, The first picture below shows the frame as I was beginning. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it as I was building it. The second picture shows it once I finished it.


Here is a shot of the south wall of the kitchen, I have the upper cabinet over the dishwasher and the upper cabinet next to the fridge left to do still and all the drawers, then once those are done I still have to install the crown on top of all the uppers.

Kitchen cabinets and butcherblock counters

I worked on the cabinet doors and counter tops yesterday. Yes I actually went to Ikea to get the counter tops. I really hate that place but the oak butcher block counters are awesome.

First I cut it to size, then I rounded the edges with my sander, then gave the entire surface a light sanding with 220 grit.



The first picture is after the sanding, the second is with one coat of oil that Ikea recommends. It's basically a blend of tung oil and linseed oil. I used two coats on the counter tops but I may add a few more.


In the above picture you can see what they look like after two coats. you can also see the cabinet doors that I finally finished building. The doors are built out of select pine slats of varying width. The drawer faces will be built the same way. We're still trying to decide if we should paint them white like the cabinets or rub them down with the tung/linseed oil to match the counter tops(or perhaps shellac them). The white of the cabinets in the pictures is primer. The final color will be an off-white, the same ones we used for the trim upstairs. Feel free to comment on which way you think would look better.

Spring is finally here

It was a beautiful day outside yesterday so once again the guest bathroom floor will have to wait. We took a few pics of the yard. We have a looooong way to go with the landscaping but there are some nice things blooming.

The Wisteria is really starting to bloom, last fall I had to hack a bunch of it back to put the fence in.

Looks like we'll get some figs this year.

This is me in the Maple tree, there was a large dead branch that had fallen on the tree that needed to be removed.

Notice the Oak in the background of the second picture from the bottom. It doesnt look like it from the angle but even as high as I am I'm nowhere near the first branches of the Oak. That is one old, massive tree.

Automatic gate opener install

The automatic gate openers came yesterday, a day early. I went ahead and watched the install DVD just to be sure but everything was pretty straight forward. It was dark by the time I got it running so I'll be finishing the up the little things like cleaning up the wiring and installing the keypad today. Here's a few pictures of the system:



I still have to do some fine tuning. It's a pretty good system, the only thing I dont care for is the noise, it's a bit noisier than I expected. You cant hear it from inside the car though.

I also went to Ikea and bought the oak butcherblock countertops yesterday. I cant wait to install them. Here's a picture of one:

Guest Bathroom - Work begins

Yesterday I started on the guest bathroom. It still has it original floor and none of it is rotted, the bad news, it's very sloped. The wood is way too brittle to pull up without destroying it so I'm having to lay a new floor. Since we're running out of time on getting the house done I've decided to use the original floor as a sub-floor. I'll add shims to the low spots to level everything out. I hate to do it this way but I dont have a choice.

This is the room to begin with:



Before I could even begin on the floor I had to do something about the plumbing for the toilet. The plumbers used 3" Schedule 40 for the drain line. The problem with that is that the flange on many old toilets will not fit into a standard 3" toilet drain flange. The toilet going in this bathroom has an especially large flange on it. I'm having to go back and redo all three toilet drain flanges in the house because of this.

The way I fixed this in the main bathroom downstairs was to cut the drain a few feet back and use a 3" to 4" coupling, then run 4" pipe to a 4" flange. This wasn't a problem since the plumbing extends down into the crawlspace. The problem here is that there is no room for that. The plumbing is constrained by the 2"x10" floor/ceiling joists. Luckily I was able to find a 3" to 4" 90 degree elbow, the 4" flange will be attached to the elbow with a short piece of 4" pipe. Luckily, there will be just enough room since I'll be installing the new floor on top of the old floor.

The part circled in red is what I replaced, notice the 3" to 4" elbow.

The elbow from above.

With the plumbing taken care of I started carefully taking out the baseboards. This was a major pain as I'm trying not to get too much debris in the kitchen below which pretty much turned out to be an exercise in futility.

You can clearly see the kitchen below through the studs.

In removing the door sill I found more evidence that this wall was the original back of the house, the studs were cut off at the floor to make the door, this was most likely originally a window.

With the baseboards out of the way I cleaned up the floor and removed any stray nails in the way. I was now ready to begin shimming the floor.


The first step was to find the high point, this turned out to be the wall between the bathroom and bedroom(the original back wall of the house), luckily it's pretty much level all the way along this wall, from there it slopes down and to the right(if you're standing in the doorway). With stringline I measured the drop at each joist. The total drop ended up being just over 1 1/2" in the far corner. Using measurments at 3 points along each joist I cut the shims and installed them. So there is no confusion I write the measurement on the sub-floor and on each end of the shim as I cut it.


With the floor leveled I began laying the new floor.



Because of the shims I'm face-nailing the boards for the the extra strength the added depth gives. I'm using 8D cut-nails. You can really see how unlevel the original floor was because of the shadows in the second picture.

Hopefully I'll finish the floor today and begin demoing the walls and ceiling.

Master Bathroom update - Primer, finally!

I finished up the walls in the master bathroom yesterday. After the final sanding on the walls I caulked the cracks in the ceiling. I went through 5 tubes of the stuff.


John I feel for you man, doing this little bathroom ceiling was bad enough. I cant imagine having to caulk every ceiling in the house.

Once the caulk dried I hit everything with a coat of primer. The plywood is the base for the beadboard but being that this is a bathroom I primered it anyways just to be on the safe side.



Next I'm going to temporarily install the toilet then move on to the guest bathroom. I'm trying to get all the dirty work done first so I can get the floors done. then I'll come back and finish off the rest.

The guest bathroom needs a new floor, walls, and ceiling. The problem is the kitchen is right below it and there's no ceiling in the kitchen so I may have to install that first.