It’s 8:00am Saturday morning, I’ve just finished carrying a couple hundred pound I-beam into the basement, with much needed help from my father, to use as a linear support for jacking joists back up flush with the girders and sublfooring and replacing sagging ledgers. We began at what so far seems to be the more difficult area to work in, the secret cistern. One end of the cistern is open enough to slide up and into on my belly. We utilized that same opening to rest one end of the I-beam on while the other end sat upon 6×6 pressure treated cribbing. The I-beam was now only about 11 inches from the bottom of the joists, allowing for a minimum distance to take up between the bottle jacks and joists. We began at the far right corner of the cistern, working our way into the middle of the floor and out of the cistern. The joists needed to come up only 1/4 of an inch or so; the real job was resecuring the ledger to the girder that the joists were notched into and then adding extra support to tie the joists into the girder. Large lag bolts were used to pull the ledger back to the girder and smaller lag bolts to “toe nail” the joists. One faulty bottle jack and about 4 nail holes in my head later, we had replaced and/or resecured 6 of the many ledgers that need attention. Thanks again Daddio!

Now that the dining room is painted, the giant gouge of a doorway that leads to the stairs stands out even more.

Here’s what it looks like right now:

(click for larger)

Why the hole-like appearance of what appears to be an original doorway? Well, our house was a two-family for some period of time, and the stairwell was blocked off with drywall. Then, when they reconverted back to a one-family, they just ripped the chunk of drywall out and left it as is. PRETTY.

Eventually Teague wants to do some work with the stairs – put in a landing, extend them a bit, etc. So there’s no point to buying molding that we’ll just take back off. We’re looking for some type of camouflage along the lines of curtains…..

Ideas:

This Saturday marked our second full week in the house, and once again we managed to make a dent in our project list. Hurray for being young, able-bodied, and energetic.

On Thursday, I made a stop at Sherwin Williams on my way home from work. I am extremely picky about paint colors. I used to buy my paint from Home Depot, but a few color flubs got me wondering if maybe a pricier paint was worth looking into. One beautiful gallon of
SW’s Amber Glow was all it took to convince me – with better paint you get a much better color, and it goes goes on smoother as well.

I picked up a gallon of Redbud, two gallons of Velvet Red, and one gallon of Bone China white enamel for the trim – all for the dining room. After a full weekend of painting, we now have a single colorful room in our dusty old house! It looks great, though entirely out of place with the rest of the decor. Check it out:

(view of the dining room entry – click for larger)

Also featured in this photo is one of the many holes in our wall – this one is right near the front door, and Teague is trying to hide it with a plant. Click here for a closeup, just for kicks.

Teague and Don spent all day Saturday eating cobwebs in the basement and trying to make our kitchen floor less spongy. We bought two twelve-ton hydraulic jacks and a bunch of jacking posts, and they went to work. I have no idea how the process works, but I know it involved some repair work as well as jacking. Teague will have to outline that part….. but the good news is our kitchen floor no longer bounces!

Here’s Teague hard at work – he’s standing in the cistern (which is currently not functional).

Our walls have cracks, bulges, and holes galore….but after researching (can you tell I’m bored today??), I’ve read that we shouldn’t gut the rooms and put up all new wallboard if we can help it.

So here are some informative articles on repairing plaster and lathe walls:

http://www.stretcher.com/stories/990621d.cfm
http://www.phouka.com/oldhouse/ren_plaster.html

The Victorians loved their wallpaper. If I was a millionairre, I would be shopping at Bradbury & Bradbury for my wallcoverings. But that’s not in the budget right now (or ever!), so we’ve got to improvise.
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Plans are in the works to start repairing our foundation problems. We’re doing it ourselves because we can’t afford to do it any other way, and because Teague’s father has a good understanding of the process and some hands-on experience as well. If you’ve got the cash, I imagine it’s probably better to hire a contractor to tackle this bit. But since we’re going DIY on this one, some research is in order.

Found some very helpful articles about foundation repair over at Hammerzone.com, including:

• Building A Concrete Pier
• Raising A Floor
• Raising Part Of A House
• Sistering Floor Joists

Another thing I learned online today:

We don’t need to buy 8 jacks – thanks to The Little White Bungalow for that tidbit!

The downstairs tub was covered in old, crusty non-slip decals. Look what a little hot water, a putty knife, some Goo-Gone and a little elbow grease will do:

Before	After

Hurrah – the upstairs toilet is now usable. No more running down the stairs half-asleep, dogs in tow, just to go pee.

Teague and Don replaced the cracked cast-iron pipe this weekend. They removed about 10′ of it, shattering the cast-iron with a mallet to get it all out. We now have shiny, nicely sealed PVC instead… and no sewage in the basement.

Click the link below for photos…
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It’s hard to believe we’ve been living in our house for less than a week. Scrubbing every surface in sight must have made me to develop an intense attachment to the place, because it already feels like home.

Tonight Teague and I are taking a much-needed break from the house, and plan to see The Incredibles…. but tomorrow will be a work day, and we’ve got a list of things to get done.

To-do’s:

• Replace 10′ of cracked pipe running from the upstairs bathroom
• Start to jack up the house
• Re-caulk the upstairs bathtub (the current caulk is cracked and falling off in big chunks)
• Fence in a small area outside for the dogs
• Remove any leftover carpet staples and nails from the downstairs hardwoods

Bad Discovery:

Last night, Teague’s father came over to help us assess the foundation problems. (We’re planning to jack up the beams in the basement and try to level the place before doing any interior work.) While poking around, he discovered a cracked pipe coming into the basement. We now know why the downstairs bathroom smells like a litter box – and it isn’t all the cat’s fault. A pipe running from the second floor to the basement (draining the shower, sink, and toilet water) has a large crack running all the way down it – meaning, it’s been leaking dirty toilet water and emptying it into the basement for years.

So, for now we’re using the (disgusting) downstairs bathroom toilet so we don’t flush more sewage into our basement. Teague is going to replace the cracked pipe this weekend, and he has been insulating the basement so that we don’t get any new cracked pipes this winter.

Good Discovery:

We have tin ceiling tiles and fancy molding stashed all over this house. There is tin under acoustic tiles in the upstairs hallway ceiling, and also in one of the upstairs bedrooms. There is tin and egg-and-dart molding hidden under the kitchen ceiling, which we can get to through a door in the floor of the second floor bathroom. The annex (a room on the back of the house that has been closed off and neglected for years and years) is also hiding tin ceilings and tin molding. It also has base molding, a nice closet door, and a radiator we can use elsewhere since we plan on pulling it down anyway.

I’m very thankful for the good finds, since they help keep our spirits up when it seems that nothing was left in proper working order. I don’t know how the previous owners could stand to let the place fall apart the way that they did, but I know that the house is smiling at us with each little fix we do. (So are the neighbors!)