The plan was simple: remove the ceiling tiles in the half bath, call an electrician to install a ceiling light and switch, proceed to repair the damaged plaster. We even had the swanky fixtures in hand. I suited up to do battle with what was possibly a small amount of asbestos. As I removed the first ceiling tile - SURPRISE! - a large cavity opened up above my head. The tiles were suspended from a frame so sturdy we did not suspect it was a dropped ceiling. The actual ceiling ended of being 22 inches taller than what we expected and mostly angled. A potentially cool feature - for sure - but, one that left us in need of a new lighting plan. We haven't quite decided how to best light the room.
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In the last few months I've been working on small projects that don't seem all that impressive. Some of the projects are not quite finished and are not going to be finished for a while. They are an ongoing process, I guess. One of those projects I started last November when I began stripping windows and doors outside. I then moved the work into the cold, cold basement for the winter. The process of priming, painting, and glazing windows was rather time consuming, mostly because of the tedious nature of drying times. In the end I got three windows done and hung. The two doors are still coming along.
After the boiler was sorted and the old furnace hauled away I knocked out a small unfinished room in the basement. We have gobs more room, now. The dark (sometimes damp) corners are exposed to light, airflow and dehumidification. The cleanup after the heating project and wall demo was more of a chore than expected. I now have to thoroughly clean the HEPA vac before bringing it inside to thoroughly clean the basement floor. Thoroughly. But, bikes and tools will soon fill the basement instead of the second floor and the back porch mud(?) room. Then I can thoroughly clean those rooms, too. Seriously, though, it will be really nice to start putting furniture, bikes and tools where they really belong. The first image of inside the small "room" doesn't really do justice to exactly how cramped and dark the room was (it's only lit by camera flash in the picture) or how it divided areas of the basement off making the corners feel small and dark, as well. But, you can see in the second picture that half the basement is way, way more open and brighter, too. Another room off to the right in the second picture was completely dominated by a very large furnace. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't take a picture of it before it was hauled off. That room is now empty, as well. The other project I was rushing to finish was the exterior painting. In an effort to get a second side done I really pushed the temperature limits of the paint. Then an unexpected cold snap hit. I will probably have to sand and repaint sections of it next spring, but I desperately wanted to have this large side of the house a single color scheme. I have 3 - 4 storm windows and 2 doors I'm going to be refinishing. I'm going to paint them in the empty basement. As I'm typing this it sounds as if we have some squirrel eradication to do. There's one in the ceiling above me... Ok I chased it around a bit and I'll call the pest guy tomorrow.
Our house came with a furnace from 1976 and a complete set of radiators still connected to an early 1900's boiler. I talked to a couple HVAC people who immediately identified the heating vents as being too small and circulating backwards. They would need to run new, bigger, and more chases throughout the house. I wasn't super excited about that as the tiny chase that was already in place is not disguised very well for how prominently it is displayed. Or maybe it is disguised well for how prominently it is displayed. But, it is prominently displayed and was about to get even bigger - all over the house. I was envisioning how much work would go into cutting all the origin trim to go around the new weirdly placed chases. In the first image you can see the small chase running up to the second floor. The cornice has been cut to accommodate this, but the rest of the trim is still in place. The second image shows the same chase to the right of the radiator and a small heating vent in front of the original radiator. When I asked the HVAC-type-people about getting the radiators back online - they were not excited about it, but not discouraging either. It just didn't seem like it was their forte. I'd spent some time on heatinghelp.com and I deduced that you definitely want someone doing the installation whose forte is boilers. Enter Schultz Plumbing. Schultz Plumbing came out a few times in the course of re-plumbing our house and I was able to interest them in the project. "Interest" isn't quite the right word, as they had no reservations about it. They brought out a sale rep from Mankato who sized our house for the correct boiler and were then installing it a little over a week later after all the parts arrived. The old radiator system was still reading 8-ish lbs. of pressure after (what I'm guessing was) 40 years of non-use. After 100 years there was some doubt as to if the gauge was still actually working or just stuck. When they started to empty the system of water and the needle dropped there was cheers all around. It was an immediate indication that the pipes and radiators were not in need of repair. The boiler installation took only a few days. The hot water heat is quietly consistent, we get to keep our beautiful radiators while removing the vents, and we do not have basement dust blowing around the house. BTW, the boiler crew found 3-4 desiccated bats in the furnace vents. Pictures 1 & 2 are a before and after of the feeder and return pipes being rerouted to exclude the old boiler. Picture 3 is an exaggerated view of the diminutive nature of the new boiler. Picture 4 - In all seriousness I thought it was a pre-filter for the new boiler, not actually the new boiler. Below - The radiators we get to keep. Imagine them sandblasted and powder coated!
Lot's of stuff - where to start. Work on the exterior continues. Below is a before and after of a patched hole that I'm pretty happy with - just needs some primer and paint. Secondly, there is a before and after of four clapboards that needed replacement. And, lastly, a shot of the progress on the north side of the house. While I was painting the outside - Schultz Plumbing was doing a total re-plumb on the inside of the house. The first column is a before and after of the hot water heater connections. So much cleaner. The hot water heater is from 1991, BTW. The second column is the kitchen before and after the temporary sink hook-up. We also tore out a chase to expose some very old lead pipes. Very cool lead fasteners look molten?/melted?/smelted? to the pipe and then secured to the wall. Lead supply lines are kinda rare, for very good reasons. These pipes are destine to be ballast in friend Jeff Schlemmer's Bonneville Truck.
Yes! Yes! Yes! A trip to the Brown County Historic Society unearthed a few really useful pictures of our house in it's original form. The front porch was nothing like we were imagining. The placement of the two front picture windows now makes a lot more sense, though. There are some other interesting details revealed in these pictures. The front porch vestibule being the most obvious. The porch pillars are probably the same as the one used on the back porch. The side porch configuration (right now we have a floating door with a fall to the ground). Wide front steps. The current chimneys have had their original corbelled tops removed. We also learned that there was originally a brick house where our house now stands (I'll post a picture of that at a later date). It burned down in 1896. We still have not confirmed the exact date our house was built. We learned that our house was primarily rented out. The family that built the house lived kitty corner in a much more grand house and they referred to this house as "The Cottage".
When we were going through the house with the inspector we spent quite a bit of time hanging out talking in the attic. That's when we first heard the squeaking. My wife and I assumed it was mice. The inspector told us it was a bat. They're very common in New Ulm. By the time we could meet with Jordan at Bud's Nuisance Wildlife Removal it was too late in the year to kick them out. After the females have their babies you have to let them do their mothering thing. When the family can all fly, that's when they get their eviction notice (hopefully). You don't want an attic full of rotting pups. Other animals show up, insects show up, and the smell is just the icing on the festering cake. There was a warning though, that when the pups start to fly they don't really know what they are doing and they find their way into your living space much more frequently. Things can get a little crazy later in the summer.
We started out hearing the bats in the walls. Then they started getting into our living space. I netted two and launched them outside. One spent up to three hours in our bedroom while we slept, though. By CDC standards we had had enough contact that we should consider ourselves exposed to rabies. The chance of getting rabies was slim, but it's something you don't bounce back from. You generally have a very small window of time to seek treatment. By the time symptoms start to manifest it's too late. Most people that die from rabies (in this country, anyways) didn't know they were exposed. And then, of course, there was the threat of even more bat contact later in the summer. We got vaccinated. A lot. The first round was six shots - one shot in each limb and one in each glute. Then one shot every week for the rest of the month. Now we only have to worry about histoplasmosis.
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AuthorsMy name is Keith. My wife is Katy. We are the owners of 418 Broadway. The house needs some love. We will be posting our progress so friends can follow. At their leisure. If they want to. And complete strangers ,too. Archives
November 2017
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