We finally have a tub!

It's been a while since my last post. I've been really busy and unfortunately most of it has not been with the house. I have gotten a few things done though. I've decided to redesign the fence I started a few months back. It was already starting to sag and was looking horrible. the new design is much stronger and looks worlds better.



Here you can see part of the new fence and part of the old. The part of the fence in the foreground is the old one. As you can see the new design is MUCH better. I turned the 2x4's up so they wont sag and added a 2x6 along the top. I'm adding finials above each 4x4 also, you can see 2 of them in the small section against the house. I'm using deck screws instead of nails. The gate will be 2 swinging doors with black wrought iron hardware, should look pretty good once I get done.

I rented a Dingo (a small ride behind front end loader with an auger attachment) over the weekend to drill all the fence holes, while I was at it I cleared all the bamboo out of the back yard with it. It looks a lot better now. I dont have the pictures with me right now so I'll have to post them later.


Up next is the breakfast nook floor and walls.




The floor was in really bad shape, there were holes in it from where the bathtub and toilet was and there was a huge hole where the old cast iron vent pipe decided to fall all by itself one night. I had broken the pipe apart earlier in the day but there was still about 15' of it going all the way up to the roof. Good thing no one was below it. It tore through the floor like it wasnt even there.

Here's a closeup of the floor, I used the reclaimed heart-pine wood from the farmhouse.


I'm hoping to finish the rest of the walls in the kitchen this weekend... yeah I know I've said that before... but I really think I can get it done.

In other news... We finally have a working tub!!!



No more 40 minute journey to my moms house just to get a shower. The inside of the tub is stained more than I initially thought. I've already tried CLR on it. I'm going to get some Brillo pads and Comet to see if I can get the rest of them out. If anyone has any tips on getting stains out please post them. I'd hate to have to get the thing re-glazed.

I really love all the antique copper finish fixtures. I also have a copper chandelier that I'll be installing soon. I painted the tub feet with hammered copper spray paint, I think it's a pretty good match. The dark green on the tub is the color that we'll be painting the walls above the beadboard.

Speaking of the beadboard. I tried to find shellac to use on the walls like Gary had said but the only thing I could find was in a spray can. So instead I went with Laquer. Some advise... NEVER use this stuff indoors! Even with my respirator on I was really dizzy by the time I was done. It took the better part of 2 days to air the house out. It came out looking good though. I used satin poly for the second coat but the laquer really richened the color.

Well hopefully I'll be posting soon with more progress. Wish me luck!

Nothing to see here, keep moving...

Not much of an update today. I've been busy with other things and havent had much time to work on the house.

I found some plaster patch product by DAP that I've been testing. It seems to work really well except that it's curing way too fast for me to work with it. On the box it says that it sets in 20-30 minutes but it's been setting in less than 5. I think it's because it's so cold in the rooms that I'm trying to use it in. It's in the low 50's in the kitchen right now. I'm going to bring a space heater in there this afternoon and see if that doesnt help. If it does I'm going to try to patch up the main downstairs bathroom so we can finally get it painted and finished.

The HVAC/plumbers havent been here all week, they've had other projects they're working on. It would be nice to have heat downstairs so I really wish they would hurry up... It's colder in the house than outside in the afternoons, the plaster walls really hold the cold in.

I'll post some pictures of my plaster work later this evening as long as it's not too much of a disaster...

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

Bathroom fixtures and weekend plans

Well we got our first shipment of bath fixtures. These are for the main downstairs bathroom. We got everything with the antique copper finish. They look absolutely beautiful! I cant wait to install them!

Here's the tub fixture:


Supply lines:


Drain line:


I had wanted to get the tub painted and installed this weekend but the plumbers ran out of time to connect the tub supply shut-offs. I may just do it myself...

They were here today to finish running the new lines to the street.





And to connect the tankless system:



So the plumbing is almost completely done. all that remains is to connect all the fixtures and it can be crossed off the list.

I'll be back at the farmhouse I've mentioned earlier salvaging as much as I can. After this weekend they will be tearing it down. After that I'll be working in the bathroom. I plan to try this plaster patch stuff I found. hopefully it will work well in the main bathroom, then all I'll have to do is skim coat. If anyone has any plaster suggestions or tips and tricks I'm more than happy to hear about it.

Titan tankless water heater install

We installed our tankless water heater today. We installed it in the laundry room next to the sink. The plumber will be out tomorrow to hook up the supply lines to it.



The N-120 is their largest unit, it's rated for a 2 bathroom house. We have 3 bathrooms but I dont think it will be an issue. 2 will hardly ever be used. Also, all of our plumbing is at the very back of the house so it doesnt have far to travel. If it turns out to not be enough for the house I'll just buy a second one and install it on the other side of the back of the house.

Once it's hooked up and we've had time to test it for at least a few weeks I'll post all my thoughts on it.

Kitchen walls revisited

Wall before:


Wall after 5 hours of work:



I hate days like this...

Bathroom beadboard walls update.

Quick update on the beadboard walls as I dont have much time to post. I'll post a lot more on this later.

I finished up the trim on the beadboard, then sanded and stained everything. I'm still not sure if I should stain it a second time or not. I'll be putting at leat 2 coats of satin poly on it. It didnt come out exactly right in the pictures, it looks like it has a purple tint to it in the pics but it doesnt.

Here I am in the process of rubbing the stain on:


This pic gives you a good idea of how much darker it is with the stain:


Here are a few after pictures:




Maybe once I apply the poly it will look better in the pictures than it does now.

The Main bathroom walls

Well I guess it's time that I post about the walls in the main downstairs bathroom. I had wanted to finish them before I posted about them but I've had a lot of delays recently.

Here's a before shot of the bathroom:

Lovely, isn't it?

Here is where I'm at right now:


I still need to finish up some of the trim and pick a color to stain it. the dark colored wood is old heartpine that I've salvaged from this house as well as the old farmhouse I mentioned in a previous post. I'm trying to use as much reclaimed wood as possible. The light colored wood is decorative grade beadboard and trim. I'm wanting to stain it all a dark color. Once I patch the plaster the walls above the beadboard will be a dark forest green or a dark burgundy. The clawfoot tub will be the same color.

We're looking for a nice high-tank toilet now. We had found one in a house that was going to be torn down (it was a really nice old one) but they've decided to not tear down the house now so we cant get it. So we're going to have to buy a new one.

The dresser on the left is going to be the vanity. I got it free from someone who had it sitting in their workshop for years collecting dust. The top piece (not visible in the above picture) we found in an old antique store in Alabama.

Here is a beter picture of the vanity:


I still need to refinish it. I'm also thinking of turning the 2 bottom drawers into double swing-out beadboard doors (from salvaged beadboard of course). The top 2 drawers will be shortened to accommodate the plumbing. We just bought all the fixtures for the room also. We are going with all antique copper fixtures from Signature Hardware.

I just realized that the sink I ordered from Signature Hardware is back ordered until January. I canceled the order and I'm looking at other options now. I think I'm going to go with this one:

This one is nice also:



Here is the Faucet we've ordered:


I'm hoping to finish the trim and start staining tonight. If I do I'll post some pictures of the progress tomorrow.

Installing the kitchen walls

I wanted to post about the beadboard walls in the bathroom but I'd rather wait until it's completed. I had hoped to get it finished off last night but I still have a little bit of trim to finish off and then I have to stain it. I havent decided which stain I'm going to use on it yet either. I want it to be really rich looking. I was thinking Red Mahogany. If anyone has any suggestions on what stain to use that would go with the floors in the previous post I'd love to hear from you.


Ok, on to the kitchen walls. Two of the walls were in really bad shape, the plaster was cracked and falling off so I removed all the plaster from them, One wall needs a lot of touching up of the plaster and the last plaster wall is in decent shape.

We decided to use reclaimed T&G 4" pine boards for the walls that the plaster had been removed from. The wood came off the walls of an early 1900's farmhouse that was being demolished.


This is the before shot of one of the walls:


Here is how far I've gotten:


It's coming along nicely. Like the colors? :) The outlet high up on the wall is for the microwave, it will be installed above the stove.

I'm hoping to get back in here and finish the walls sometime next week. I'll be out of town again this weekend so I wont get any work done, then I have to finish off the main bathroom so we can finally get our tub in there. I'm tired of making the trek to my moms house just to take showers...

Downstairs bathroom floors -9-15-06

When we got the house the main downstairs bathroom floor looked pretty good. We thought it would just need to be refinished. Half of the floor was covered by linoleum. I pulled the linoleum up and found this:


Damn. It's a wonder the tub and toilet didnt go crashing into the crawlspace...

I pulled up the floor (being very careful to salvage what boards I could) and discovered another floor underneath it:



It's nice wide-plank heartpine but unfortunately it's in really bad shape.

I went ahead and pulled it up also and found this:



All three of the joists are rotted, not only that but they are notch-cut so they are splitting too. I decided to remove them instead of sistering them because I'm not a big fan of notch-cutting floor joists.

I pulled them out and replaced them with pressure-treated 2x8's and metal joist hangers.


As you can see the plumbers have replaced all the old cast iron pluming with new PVC / CPVC.

Next I laid a sub-floor of 3/8 plywood. I should have gone with 5/8 in hindsight but it's too late now:


I made sure to mark off where the joists are so it's easier to nail the new flooring in.

Then it was time for the new flooring. We have a bunch of 5 1/8" Southern yellow pine T&G flooring that we got for $1.50 sq/ft. Cant beat that price though I really wanted heart pine.

I laid the new flooring in, this was my first time ever laying flooring and I think it came out great considering. The first board took forever to get just right but the rest went pretty quickly.




I called the floor guys in to finish the floor so we could get a working bathroom in the house ASAP. It's no fun having to run up to Burger King every time nature calls...

They came out and showed me a bunch of samples but none looked just right. Most of the rest of the house is heart pine, I wanted something that either would match that or compliment it. The morning they came out to stain I ran to home depot and found Red Chestnut stain by Minwax. I bought it and came home to try it out on a scrap piece of flooring. It looked pretty good so I told them to use that.

Here are the results:



I'm amazed at how much it looks like heart pine! the floor guys were really amazed too. the floor looks really glossy in the pics because it was still wet. We decided to go with a satin finish to keep with the period.

Well that's it for the floors. Next was to install the beadboard. I'll post that next.

Kitchen wiring and insulation - 9-9-06

I've rewired the entire kitchen since the walls are down. I'm also adding 2 RG-6 coaxle jacks and an RJ-45 network jack. The network jack and one of the cable jacks are in the breakfast nook, the other cable jack is next to the counter to the right of the sink. I've installed a media panel for all the media connections. It's in the closet in the study. I'll post more on that later.

Kitchen Appliances

The look we're going for in our kitchen is sort of a primitave farmhouse look. We're going to be reusing the cabinets that were in the old kitchen, they are good solid plywood cabinets. I'll be building beadboard doors for them though. 2 walls will be plaster and the other 2 will be T&G wood.

For the appliances we decided to go with stainless, everything is Frigidaire with the exception of the dishwasher, it's a Kitchenaid. I know stainless is not primative but I've gotta have nice appliances.

Sorry about the terrible picture quality...

The fence - 8-19-06

I'm installing a 6' privacy fence all the way around the back yard. It's roughly 463' of fencing. The neighbors to the left of us had been using our driveway as a drivethrough, I got tired of seeing cars pulling through my driveway at all hours of the day and night so I decided to make the fence a priority.

To date I've only gotten the first 6 sections of fence up but it was enough to blcok their path through my driveway. The problem is the soil, Georgia clay is some hard ass stuff. I dug the 6 post holes by hand, 2' deep, and had some serious blisters. I'm going to rent a hand auger as soon as I have a free weekend.

The back of the back yard is a jungle, I had to hack a trail all the way around the yard for the fence.


Here's a sample of what I had to hack through.



Here's the fence so far. I'm hoping to finish it either this weekend or next.

We're also going to install a picket fence in the front yard but that will probably be a month or two off.