living and dining rooms

This week we hung the Sheetrock walls and boxed in the second door to the kitchen. Eventually we will build a built- in hutch to fill the space of the old doorway. Here's a few shots of the two rooms.....

living room finishing

Today we hung the Sheetrock in the living room ceiling... We picked up 12 foot sheets to cut down on the number of joints to tape and spackle. Dad brought a sheet lift, which saved our backs and necks .

Here is the room with the ceiling leveled and ready for Sheetrock.....



Sooner or later I'll actually take a few photos of the progress.

finishing the walls

We took a few weeks vacation to start the finishing work on the master bedroom and the first floor.
We started by removing all of the old paint on the perimeter walls.... This was achieved with a hand held scraper over many shifts of bloodied knuckles and sore wrists .
A swipe of the scraper takes the four or five coats of paint down to bare plaster. The paint is so old and hard that it cracked and fractured into tiny chips; cleanup with a vacuum was quick and clean (relatively)

Plaster cracks were gouged out with a dremel tool , filled with plaster and smoothed over. Each of the walls required extensive repairs from generations of neglect and inadequate repair attempts.

We mixed batches of hydraulic lime based mortar, injection grout, and scratch coat plaster using materials from DeGrunchy's lime works ( www.limeworks.us). Same manufacturer as the mortar we used for pointing.

Around forty batches of masonry repair materials later, we're nearly ready to paint the bedroom.

I'll post some photos of the plaster work and the master bedroom ready for paint soon.

Floor restoration

Before we can buy restoration materials for the floor, we need to determine what species of tree the floors were made from.  I planed down a few scraps of floorboards that were left over from the living room hearth project, and it looks like it is mostly White Oak, Pin Oak, Red Oak, and possibly some Chestnut.

The floor is 5/4" thick Tounge and Groove, random width boards.  It is face-nailed with old wrought iron "cut" nails, which makes lifting any of the boards excruciatingly painful!
The floor boards, and most of the original lumber in the house, was most likely cut at Bishop's Mill.  The Mill was one of many, just 1.5 miles down the road in what is now Ridley Creek State Park. 

Here's a few shots of the floor-


 I called a bunch of local saw mills and lumber wholesalers to get quotes for about 100' of oak - 8' - 12' wide, quarter sawn and straight sawn to match the grain pattern of the original floor materials.  Oak is Expen$ive!  the local lumber yard is selling 5/4"  straight sawn oak for $8 / ft!!! no way Jose.

A friend recommended checking Wood Finder, where a number of local DIY-esque sawmills advertise their locally grown and harvested wood.  I found the contact info for East Coast Log, on the site, and called.  I spoke with the owner/operator, Art Weeks, about our floor project.  Art was very helpful; he suggested that we visit his mill, check the stock, and pick out the right boards for our floor.  East Coast Log had a bunch of White, Red, and Pin Oak in stock, for about $3 / ft, what a difference!

We're planning a trip to pick out the materials in the next few weeks, 'll post some photos from the trip.

Master Bedroom Progress

I spent the weekend scraping windows in the master bedroom and installing the weatherstripping to seal things up for the winter. The new windows look great, they really brighten things up.





Back in the summer I tore out the cracked mortar hearth in the master bedroom fireplace, and cut some antique bricks to lay a new one. here's a photo of the bricks cemented in place, before grouting. The plaster surround in the hearth was crumbling, so we stripped it from the bricks; not sure if we'll clean up the bricks, or reapply plaster to finish it off.....

While we work on the walls and the floor in the master bedroom I am going to have the paint stripping shop dip the fireplace mantle, bedroom door, moulding, and the "cubby" cabinet doors from either side of the fireplace. When I pried the mantle off of the wall a bunch of old cards fell out from behind it... one is a political advertisement from the 1884 presidential election with an image of James G. Blaine. Blaine was the GOP candidate in 1884 against Grover Cleveland.

We're also in the market for about 100 bd. ft. of oak lumber to replace some of the old floorboards that were cracked, or broken during the installation of plumbing, electricity, and radiator piping many years ago. We're going to buy rough lumber and replicate the old boards as closely as we can. eventually we'll refinish the whole floor in the master bedroom, so the difference should be not so noticeable.

Paint Stripping....

So I attempted to strip a bedroom door with chemical stripper.... it was no fun. I'm convinced that chemical stripper sold at Home Depot, ( much like home depot itself) is purely a cruel trick for homeowners; they promise "easy" stripping and flash images of rhino skin thick paint effortlessly falling off of intricately carved wooden surfaces.



The interior doors, mantles and mouldings have multiple coats of old paint gobbed on, filling in all of the detail and flaking off in large chips. Our previous attempt to strip one door took us about 12 hours, and 2 cans of chem strip. @ ~$25 per can of stripper, there has to be a better way!



After confiding in a friend my troubles with stripping old millwork and doors, he recommended a paint stripping shop in Wilmington Delaware, called RandR stripping. I loaded up the front door and transom window in the old Ford and drove to scenic Wilmington to deliver the pieces. After driving back and forth across town I found RandR tucked away on an unmarked street, adjacent to a chop-shop. Bob, a jovial man of retirement age and the some, greeted me at the door of his cinder block-walled facility. Upon entering Bob's dimly-lit dungeon of stripping I was pleased to find a number of rather intricately carved pieces that had just come out of the dipping tank, paint-free.



Bob called a few days later; "What the hell was that door painted with on the outside?" he asked. The exterior surface had no less than 10 coats of petrified oil paint prior to stripping - It looked like alligator skin, with cracks throughout. Bob claims that the door had to be left in the dipping tank overnight to work over the rhino skin paint.



In the buff, you can see the plugs and patches that were made to fill in where old lock sets had been removed... The door has seen better days.

Happy Halloween!

Kat spent many hours crafting Liam's first Halloween costume- Liam was a great woodland creature and he was greeted by smiling people at every door we visited.....

Soon we will have heat again......

Here's a few photos of the revised heating system.  Since the whole house is torn apart, and the original radiators were covered in 2000 coats of paint, we took the "oportunity" to install radiant floor (pex) heat.  The radiant floors combined with the wood stove should have the house feeling toasty warm on even the coldest days.

+ I started by downloading a free copy of Taco's FloPro Designer software.  Laying out the system was not completely intuitive, but not difficult either.  Taco's tech support: Ra Puuri (FloPro designer questions) and George Taber (control systems) was very helpful.  I emailed the FloPro files to Ra several times and explained my issues; he made corrections and sent the files back.  The website also includes a plethora of wiring diagrams, which I used to tie-in the zone valve controls, Domestic priority switch, and pump relay controls.

+We ran 2000' of red oxygen barrier pex tubing in the joist spaces on the first floor and in the basement.  Each floor now has it's own manifold, each with four tubing loops.
+ We installed a new SS chimney liner for the boiler flue; now the boiler flue gasses are isolated completely from the fireplaces in the dining room and Liam's room. Safety First!

+ The two green boxes to the left of the manifold are the Zone valve control (Taco ZVC403) and the circulator pump relay control(SR504 Exp).  There are two zone valves on the radiant floor loops, one for each floor of the house.  The pump relay control is switching 3 high temp radiator pumps (kitchen/mudroom, third floor, and domestic hot water) along with the primary boiler loop circulator pump.  Lots of pumps!

+Here is the Raidant Mixing Block.  The RMB houses a radiant circulator pump, and an injection pump in one unit.  The pump elements are servicable and are stock items at most plumbing sullpy houses.  The RMB control modulates the injection pump based on the set temperature for the radiant tubing.  A mixed water temperature sensor was supplied with the unit.  The RMB included an outdoor sensor that will be used to reset the radiant floor tubing temperature based on the change in outdoor temp.

+ The tubing is currently clipped to the floor joists, up against the floorboards.  Before we insulate the joist bays and install the ceiling, I'm going to test out the system and compate the heat transfer with and without aluminum plates.  I made a manual press to form aluminum heat transfer plates, similar to the one that Tom Massie built in this link...

A few odds and ends to clean up, and we'll be ready to fire the boiler.

Record of sale, 1826

We have been working on learning the history behind our house for some time now, so I decided to take a trip to the Delaware County Archives.  The archives building is only 1/4 mild down the road, and they allow open access to all historic tax records, wills, hospital info and court cases.

A quick search on the Delco Archives site pulled up Thomas Riley's will and his notice of death.  We also found a record of death and assessment from Mark W. Baker (second owner of our house 1872-1905).  The assessment included a complete list of all of the contents of the house and where they were situated.  With this document you can take a virtual tour through our house in 1905!.

I then drove over to the Delco recorder of deeds and came up with the record of Thomas Riley's land purchase (prior to building our house).

Here is a scan of the deed for our property from 1826, when Thomas Riley purchased 8 acres from Thomas Clark.  The document includes the name of the owner prior to Clark, so I have another trip to the Delco recorder of deeds to make!

I have a bunch more historic documents that I'll scan and post sooner or later.

uupdate- windows

Been a long while since we added anything to the ole farmhouse blog..... we've made some fair progress in the un-muddling restoration since gutting the place.  all of the double hung windows on the first and second floors have been restored. -  We took advantage of a custom window sale at the local big orange box, saved a few thousand $ on aluminum clad solid wood windows.  they are high efficiency, which may qualify us for some more Obama Bucks come tax season.

each window was a 24hr labor of love:
1. tear out old lead painted sashes, interior casing , exterior casing, interior sill and sill frame.- the old interior sills had rotted and were loaded with mouse nests, bee hives and paper wasps....

2. fabricate a new sill frame to support the sill

3. stencil old interior sill and cut out new one
4. strip all paint from original window frame and exterior sill- the frame is a 4"x5" pine timber frame, in a few cases we had to replace pieces and parts of the exterior sill due to water damage.

5. Prime frame and exterior sill with penetrating Alkyd primer coat
6. widen sash opening to fit custom replacement sash kit
7. fill in sash weight cavity on either side of window with "great stuff" - This should minimize the stink bug nesting that took place over the last few seasons, and improve insulation.....
8. fit in new sash jamb liners - the new ones are spring assisted and tilt-lock for easy cleaning.

     
9. Finish paint interior of sashes - all were painted gloss white enamel
10. chisel exterior mortar joint out around the frame
11. cut, fit, and install new casing on exterior of frame
12. re-point (mortar) joint around window frame
13. one last coat of paint on the whole exterior of the frame to clean things up.

Next we move on to installing the floorboard heat