Study walls and electrical

The other day I got the drywall hung on the study side of the wall. I'm keeping the foyer side open until all the electrical is completed.



Yesterday I worked on the electrical for the Study and the Foyer. I rerouted the study overhead light switch from where it used to be by the old door (now a window) to next to the french doors. I used a double gang box because the other switch will control a set of sconces that I installed over the fireplace.

Then I had to install a new box when I wired up the foyer light, there wasn't anything here since the foyer and study were one room. Interestingly enough the overhead light in the study was centered on just the study, not the combined rooms. There was some old knob & tube in the ceiling above where I placed the box in the foyer. More proof that the 2 rooms were originally separate.


I still have to install some outlets in the new wall, then I can close it up and begin the fun task of mudding it.

Beadboard Study walls and built-in bookcase

I've spent the last few days working on the Study. I've begun hanging the beadboard on the walls. The beadboard is from a Textile Mill in Atlanta, It's the same stuff I used to build the Kitchen island.



The beadboard was being used as the sides for work tables in the Mill. I had to deconstruct them to be able to use it. First I had to carefully pry off the baseboards and trim, then I had to pull each piece from the 2x2 frame. The nail usually stayed in the frame so I had to be very gentle so the beadboard didn't shatter.

In the above picture I laid a piece of the baseboard against the wall to get an idea of how it will look. There will be a chair-rail piece at the top, same as the baseboard but just narrower, and trim above the baseboard and below the chair-rail. Everything will then be stained the same mahogany color, including the window and door trim.

I've been wanting to build a set of built-in bookshelves for the Study but hadn't come up with an idea that I liked. Yesterday I grabbed a piece of paper and began sketching ideas on it. Half way through I realized that the idea in my head was for some type of columned look. I realized that I just so happen to have a few columns laying around... the ones I saved from the Anderson House.

Originally I had wanted to use the columns for the second floor porch but I wasn't able to save enough of them for that. I continued sketching and eventually came up with this:


The columns themselves are just over 8' high, they come right up to the picture-rail(which will be removed from this wall). The entire bookcase will be 10' high, floor to ceiling.

I brought 2 of the colums inside to test fit them, they fit perfectly! So I brought them out onto the front porch and began working on them. They were in pretty rough shape. One column was very rotted at the base but I was able to take it apart, cut away the bad pieces, and use it to fix up the other 2 columns. While I had one of the columns open I decided to leave something for a future restorer to find. I wrote this on the inside of the column as well as putting a copy of my sketch for the bookshelves in with it.


Once both columns were structurally sound I began the long task of scraping and sanding them. They've got what looks like 3 or 4 coats of very heavy, thick paint. The first coat at the bottom looks like it might be milk paint.

The wood has beautiful color and great graining. I took one of the finished columns(minus the crown and base) back inside for a test fit.


The columns should be finished by today, then I can begin building the bookcase.

Converting the Study door back to a window

Yesterday I started working on the walls in the study and ended up ripping out the door and converted it back to a window. The door in question leads out to the front porch. It was put in during the 50's remodel to convert the house to apartments. It was the front door to the second downstairs apartment.



I didnt have my camera during the work yesterday so the only pictures I have are before and after, well, semi-after. I still have a few more things to do to finish it.



The plywood below the window is temporary until I can find some siding to stagger in. The window itself is temporary too. I have a neighbor that might give me 7 sets of windows from his house, they are really neat 25 over 1 light windows. As a matter of fact, if you look at the first "before" picture at the top you can see one in the background. They are also the correct size for my window frames. I had to shim this window to fit. It's 2" narrower and 3" shorter that the other ones.

Today I'll turn my attention back to the walls in the Study, and if I have time, the built-in bookcases.

Ballard House - Another one falls to the wrecking ball

Unfortunately we've lost another piece of history forever. The Ballard house was at one time a grand southern plantation. It was what started me on my journey of actively searching out old houses to restore. I found it by accident years ago when I was in a gas station getting gas.


I've always admired old homes, but seeing this one and walking through it and feeling it's history emminating from the walls gave me the restoration bug bad. I contacted the real estate agent for the property and asked him about the house. The owner had started restoring it a few years before but had given up because he had already put a lot of money into it and the area was turning commercial. The agent spoke with the owner about my desire to have the house, he said I could have it for $12,000. He also said that he had a lot of extra things like doors, windows, and trim in storage that I could have. I was really excited and began looking for land to move it to and someone to move it.

I also began researching the history of the house. It was built in 1869 by Levi Ballard. He was a Sargent in the Confederate Army. The story goes that before the war he was just a poor average farmer but that he came back from the war with lots of money. He built this plantation and hired sharecroppers to work it. He also started the first bank in town and was a Grand Master of the Free Masons.

In the end I was not able to purchase the house. It still remained in the back of my mind though. Just recently I started thinking about it alot. I figured that maybe now I would be able to find some land for it, move it there and let it sit for a while until I was able to restore it. I finally decided to drive by it yesterday and found nothing but an empty field. The attendant in the gas station said that it was just torn down recently and a shopping center was going to be built there. I am absolutely crushed by this. The house was on the National Register of Historic Places. This was a huge piece of history that is now gone forever, like so many others...

Here are some pictures of the place, these are now all that is left.

Left Side

Right Side

Front

Back

Ariel View taken before the kitchen collapsed

The kitchen fell in years before I ever found the place. When the sewer line in the foreground of the above picture was put in, the remains of it were pushed back into a pile and are still there now. Not sure why they were not taken when the house was torn down but there is still a lot of good wood in the pile.

Parlor

Dining Room?

Central Hall

Upstairs Front Porch

Front Entrance

Barn

Smokehouse

The barn burned down last year, it was set by a homeless person living in it.

The First Baptist Church across the street where the Ballard family is buried

Levi Ballards grave

New study wall and hanging the french doors

A few months back I tore down the wall between the study and foyer. This wall was built in 1955 when the house was converted to apartments. I've been puzzling over this wall for months and I believe I finally have the answer.

There was a wall in the same location when the house was originally built. Sometime in the 30's there was a major renovation on the house. The wall was removed during this time. Also during this time a larger front doorway was installed. The door always looked to me like it was from the 30's and not original. The entire doorway is 7' wide, the original hallway was 6' wide. The wall was removed, the new doorway added, and on the opposite wall a built-in bookcase was added. I'm not really sure why they removed the wall in the 30's remodel, I'm guessing they wanted a combination foyer/sitting room.

In 1955 when the house was being converted to apartments they needed to put the wall back up but because the doorway was now wider it couldn't be installed in it's original location. To make matters worse, the built-in on the opposite wall wouldn't allow for the wall to be shifted over the foot it needed to go. What they came up with was to build a slanted wall. It covered one edge of the doorway on one side, and the edge of the built-in on the other.

Here are 2 pictures of what the wall looked like when we found the house(it's on the left in the first pic, right in the second):

View from rear hall

View from front door

You can see how slanted it is and how it covers up the door frame. So last December I got tired of looking at the crooked wall and tore it down.




I then carefully removed the built-in. I will be installing it on the wall under the stairs eventually.


Over the weekend I started the project of building the new wall. First I had to cover up the space where the built-in was. I toyed with a lot of ideas for the space but eventually decided to just cover it up for now since I'm running short on time.

First I installed some studs using some of my salvaged 2x4's from other parts of the house. I'll be using my salvaged beadboard for the bottom 4' of the wall so I needed to come up with some type of sub-wall to nail it to. The lath is 3/8's thick, the plaster is another 3/8's, then there's 1/2" drywall above the plaster. The yellow pine floorboards that I have are 3/4" thick. That is the same thickness as the plaster and lath together which brings me exactly to the depth I need.


With that out of the way I could begin rebuilding the main wall. The first step was to cut back the outer layer of drywall about a foot all the way around. In the picture below you can see where the original wall was and the foot of drywall I cut back:


Next I laid out my new wall on the floor with chalk-line. the new wall will have a double door opening in the center of it for my salvaged french doors.


I then framed out the rest of the wall, I used most of the same studs that were in the wall I took down. With the wall up I built the door jambs and hung the french doors. I had to use new wood for most of the jambs as I didnt have any salvaged pieces tall enough. These doors are really tall, almost 90".

View from back hall

View from Parlor

View from inside the Study

Once the wall is finished I'll strip and stain the doors and trim.

Here's the door hardware I'll be using for the door:

Once the door is refinished I'll polish it up. I'm hoping to complete the wall within the next few days.

Paint on insulation

I found this product browsing through a home improvement magazine today. It's from a company called Industrial Nanotech and it's called Nansulate. Here is their website:

http://www.industrial-nanotech.com/nansulate_home_protect.htm

The product started out as an insulative coating for pipes but it has moved into the home market. It goes on just like paint and comes in either white or translucent. you can also paint right over it and it's water based. The website says that with 3 coats it will provide a 60 degree temperature difference for the Homeprotect Clear Coat brand and 30 degrees for the Homeprotect Interior brand. It protects against all three kinds of heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation. Standard insulation only protects against conduction. It's also mold resistant.

It sounds really great but it's $65 a gallon and one gallon only covers 150 square feet(with the required 3 coats). To do all the exterior walls in our house would cost roughly $1200 to $1600, that doesn't include the floors or ceilings. That's not too bad a price but we've used up all the money in our construction loan so unfortunately we wont be buying it any time soon.

Guest Bathroom floor finished

I finally got around to finishing the floor in the guest bathroom. It got put on the back burner because of my salvage operation at the Anderson House and because of the trees that needed to be planted.


Getting the toilet drain perfect was very important. As I mentioned earlier these old toilets have a larger drain than modern ones, they wont fit in a 3" flange so I had to rip out the plumbers work and use a 4" flange. It was very close but I managed to get everything to fit perfectly.


I went by the Anderson house on Saturday, most of the debris has been hauled away but there were still plenty of bricks laying around everywhere. I managed to collect another couple hundred. I now have a grand total of 1011 bricks.


I also managed to get our porch swing hung yesterday.

Next I hope to get the kitchen ceiling hung then it's back to the guest bathroom to rip out the walls and ceiling.