Old Stone House

Having spent 9 months taking a much needed break from renovating, we have embarked on another frustrating repair – completely upgrading the exterior of the rear of the house. (More to come on this hell in the following months) In mentioning this to my neighbour, he asked if the heritage board was going to let us make the changes we wanted, and proceeded to demonise the heritage board, pointing out their faults etc. In response to this, I’m going to clarify just what having a historical designation means. (more agony and joy…)

So it has been about 4 months since we updated the site, and it certainly hasn’t been fueled by apathy – we needed a break. Since moving into our home almost 3 years ago, we have spent every free moment, and every extra dollar doing everything we can to make this house our home, and to do so in a manner which pays homage to our house’s heritage. However there comes a time when one must stop and take a breather, before the passion and finance becomes resentment and poverty. Such is our case. After the holiday had passed, we decided that we would take a breather for our own sanity. In that time much has happened. Our house has been officially granted historical status, we’ve completed our basement, and glacier-like ice dams on the roof managed to ruin parts of the drywall in the kitchen. As well, it has become apparent with the spring thaw that the exterior trim needs to be stripped and painted, and several of the concrete retaining walls need to be replaced. In essence, even though we took a break, the house didn’t.

Understand, we’re not discouraged, if anything we’re inspired to forge ahead with our plans as taking a break offered the reenergizing boost we needed.

So what did we do while on our break? Well… I played with trains. When I’m not smashing walls with sledgehammers, or shocking myself, I like to work on my N scale model railroad. I can’t imagine anything better then spending a cold winters evening in the basement playing affectionately with the memories of my youth. (All the while assessing the floor joists above, looking for the source of squeaks, and imagining how I might change the heating ducts to improve air flow…) For those interested, I did update my railroad blog and documented my progress through the winter.

www.modelrailroader.ca

We’ll talk soon.

Since finishing the electrical, we’ve been waiting a month to start the drywall. The problem is, it has rained every-other-day for a month, and we couldn’t coordinate a delivery date with our friends that didn’t leave the drywall sitting in the driveway for a spell. This logistical nightmare was complicated further by the fact that in order to get the drywall into the basement, we needed to rip out the stairs…

Needless to say we had been climbing the walls for a month…

Yesterday afternoon my father and mother dropped by to visit the grandkids (I suspect they wanted to visit us as well). After exchanging pleasantries, my father, sympathetic to our frustration, suggested that we go get the drywall ‘right now’ and just ‘get it done’. Like Uncle Jesse and Bo Duke, we tore off to the lumberyard (which closed at 5:00pm) in dad’s pickup and loaded up 32 sheets of gypsum. It wasn’t until we arrived home that my father (a shop teacher and restorer of old homes) announced that he wouldn’t be lifting a single sheet of drywall.

(more agony and joy…)

Every holiday season my wife and I take great pains to decorate the house – contemplating the most minor details, and orchestrating elaborate stagings to both reflect our tastes, and genuine love for the holidays. This year was no different, so as December began, we started adorning the house with assorted ephemera.

We decided on an understated, yet classy dressing for the exterior of the house – an effective combination of lights, floods and greenery, that enhanced the natural beauty of the home, yet resonated with the appropriate seasonal tidings. We pained over the lights we purchased, opting for environmentally friendly LED mini lights – evaluating the 3 different shades of ‘white’. As well, we acquired fluorescent flood lights – again testing to ensure that the hue of their light partnered suitably with the twinkles.

(more agony and joy…)

A while back, we visited the bank to discuss our house, mortgage etc. We had a fantastic conversation with our representative, who started asking questions about our house. It turned out that she too had an old house that was in a constant state of repair, and she understood the costs involved therein. We learned that she was a member of the Heritage Committee, and they were always awarding grants to help maintain designated homes of historical significance. She suggested that we apply, that they were always looking for worthwhile projects. We concluded our discussions, agreeing that it would be nice to be awarded some grant money, but thought nothing more of it.

(more agony and joy…)

If you’ve been a regular visitor to this site, you will have probably noticed that this blog is updated quite regularly, but the posts are 3 months old. Over the past 4 months we done a lot of work on the house, and I’ve jotted down the events as we’ve worked away, but I but I’ve haven’t managed to find the time to actually upload them. As such, please bear with us as I update the archives!

(Oh mercy, I have to put up the Christmas lights still!)

With the framing complete, a definite momentum had begun as we now started to round the corner towards the finish. that momentum was supercharged by an evening of manly wiring.

As I mentioned earlier, all of the utilities in the basement were installed poorly, if not dangerously, and the same was true of the wiring. The one difference with the wiring was that all of the hidden junction boxes and spliced wires were for the basement room only. It seems that whoever wired the kitchen and bathroom above, did things right. It was only the ‘afterthought’ basement that had the problems. Unlike the plumbing and the heating, I didn’t have to try to preserve any of the original wiring, so I cut the whole mess out.

(more agony and joy…)

With the major utilities dealt with, we could finally start framing the room, starting with the ceiling. Past additions and renovations meant that the ceiling joists were random at best. In the area beneath the oldest part of the kitchen, the joists were 2×10’s or 3×10’s (that’s true inches) on rough 16inch centers. The rest of the joists were combinations of different sized boards, with random spacing.

(more agony and joy…)

Having moved all of the waste pipes, installed a laundry tub, and moved the water meter, the only remaining chore was to move the copper piping. Like the ABS, the copper pipes had been installed correctly, however they were pinned on the underside of the joists, which meant that they once again would require small bulkheads if they weren’t moved. The saving grace was that the copper pipes simply needed to be raised, not reconfigured like the waste pipes.

(more agony and joy…)

With the water meter moved and the laundry tub installed, the time had arrived to address the plumbing; on this night we were going to fix all the waste pipes. Whoever had installed the original waste pipes had done a good job; in fact, all of the plumbing in the house was done well, it just wasn’t done very elegantly. Rather then try to hide pipes in the walls or ceiling, all of the plumbing had been installed without camouflage, residing below the floor joists, rather then between them, (as seen in the bathroom reno) and travelling from point A to B in the most direct route possible. The previous owners had built enormous bulkheads to conceal the pipes, but that only perpetuated their ugliness, and limited head room.

(more agony and joy…)