Old Stone House

One of the more disappointing discoveries of this reno has been unearthing some knob and tube wiring. Past home inspectors and insurers alike had all agreed that the house had been electrically updated with a proper breaker panel and wiring alike, but despite this we found a great mass of knob and tube wiring in the front entrance. Naturally, the moment you mention the words “knob and tube” grave warnings and red flags shoot up, and you are immediately condemned to an impeding fire, loss of insurance and any other possible tragedy imaginable…

(more agony and joy…)

With the wall built, we only but minimally insulated that which we could. At this point we could have ripped out all the lathe and plaster, strapped the walls (solid stone), insulated and drywalled – but the loss of space in the room would have prevented ANY new tub from fitting in the space – let alone an undersized one! As such, we chose to preserve the ‘dead-air’ space, and left it alone.

(more agony and joy…)

The waste/stink pipe for the bathroom travels up the far corner of the room, and was originally boxed-in. We decided that we could afford to keep the pipe boxed-in as the loss of space was not significant, and more importantly, we didn’t have any place to move the pipe to! (more agony and joy…)

One of the more interesting discussions about our house has to do with ‘dead air space’ and energy conservation. Our house, like all others of its era, was never insulated – despite this it keeps temperature/heat quite well. Naturally it is more expensive to heat then new homes, but I was surprised to find that it wasn’t as bad as expected. An older contractor explained that the reason for this was that the house was in fact insulated somewhat with ‘dead air space’.

(more agony and joy…)

Today we went gang-busters on the bathroom, ripping and tearing like mad! We managed to rip out all the fixtures, tear down the plaster/drywall, and open-up a channel in the wall beneath the bathroom. The gut-job went real well, with only a few minor headaches, such as having to take all the trim off the doors to get the tub out… What we found when we had finished opening the walls up was pretty disappointing.

(more agony and joy…)