Older [Houses] Are Beautiful Lovers

I learned this week, in a wash of sawdust and galvanized nails, that old houses are like old people:

In time, they all start to sag.  

No matter how they're made, be it brick or wood or straw, give a house 100 years and you'll be able to see its laugh lines, the creases around its corners.  There's no Botox for houses.  We're lucky that Cleveland is safe and sound for all normal living purposes - he passed inspection with both Dad's and the structural engineer's seal of approval - but our lovable Cleveland does a bit of characteristic sloping around doorways and windows.  We could easily ignore the droop, call it charm, and keep on moving, but in another 100 years, that sloping could mean serious problems.  So - we're doing as any house lover would do and lifting him back up.

If you're looking for every mind-boggling detail, please read my father's blog.  It's a really fantastic description of all our hard work, and he is about ten thousand times more precise than I am!  I only understand about half of what he says, and then I'm forced to try and explain and that never goes too well... (You can find it here: https://www.ownerbuilderbook.com/blogs/users/Mutton-Busting.aspx)

Needless to say, Todd was welcomed home from tour with a whole lot of hard work. Lifting an entire house is no easy feat. (It's also one that makes me incredibly nervous to get my fingers anywhere near the jack they're using. Imagine that pinch!).  First, they started in the basement.  Using the aforementioned jacks, Dad and Todd lifted and installed a new beam to support the den floor.  Then, they put in two permanent post jacks for a little extra support before moving upstairs.

The lams in the den - you can see them snug against the original floor beams, but they're a little shinier and much more orange in color.

In the den, where the sagging around the bay windows was probably the worst, they used laminated veneer lumbar AKA "lams" or "LVLs" across the whole room for additional support and replaced the entryway header with a new beam where dipped.  They also added a few in the kitchen which I think means they had to install 13 total between the two rooms.  Keep in mind, these things are heavy!  Getting them to the ceiling involves a lot of maneuvering weight while on the ladder.  (I couldn't even use the drill while on the ladder outside without getting queasy...)  So den and kitchen?  Check!

Next, they tackled the issue by the front door.  When the original front doors were taken out a few years ago, they were replaced with double arching doors and a new frame that was pretty terribly constructed.  I'm no construction expert, but even I can tell you a nail job where both pieces of lumber are cut at the same place is just a recipe for disaster.  I mean really, didn't those people take physics?  Don't they remember how to draw Force arrows?  To fix the problem of the C- student designing our door frame, Dad and Todd added a new horizontal board to cover that unintended joint and distribute the weight.  They also threw in few shims (those little skinny pieces of wood) to get the height just right while the ceiling was supported by jacks.

If you look closely at the top center of this photo you can see the two different aged 2x4's cut and nailed at the same spot.  The board below is what Todd and Dad added to distribute the weight.  If you look even closer you can see the broken shims splaying out to the sides just above that!

However, just as we began to let the jacks down, the old guy (the house, not dad hehe) started shifting!  Grumble, rumble, moan!  Just like Lyle when he's grumpy, he groaned a minute and then settled back into a slightly less sagging form, breaking the little shims on his way back down (about 3/4 of an inch).

Dad was puzzled.  "It's better..."  You could see him thinking briefly about our budget and how many more LVLs we could afford.  BUT Dad does nothing half-ass, so after maybe 30 seconds of budget weighing, he decided on more LVLs for supporting the ceiling in this room too.  Fine with me!

My two favorites dudes juggling weight as they work to attach a new beam to the ceiling.

After a full few days of nip and tuck, Old Clevie looks almost brand new.  He's still got a few little dimples, but he's surely not going to fall and break a hip.  That's success in my book!

the empty plate

So, I'm currently in Houston with a good friend of mine, visiting my sister in her recently renovated masterpiece, and while before we arrived all I could think about was designer wedding gowns (we're doing a few much anticipated bridal store visits while I'm here) and cocktails on classy Houston Heights patios, right now the only thing on my mind is, nice work, Mom and Dad.  Kelsey's house is fabulous, and I do mean that in the most glamorous way.  It's the details, folks, the details!  The glass knobs and chrome plates on every door (not to mention the doors themselves!), the custom beadboard paneling the fridge, the eighteen different lighting options for each room, the custom hardware, the perfectly aligned stepping stones to the back gate.  Incredible. 

And everything fits.  There's no sign of afterthought, no lack of attention leading to a fridge sitting out of place at the end of a counter, no awkwardly large gaps between a bathroom vanity and shower stall.  It truly is perfect.

It's so easy to feel underwater in the middle of a renovation.  The details, when tossed and tumbled into some vague ball of yarn are hard to untangle, hard to see, and with time start to weigh on your vision, trapping you into each moment, rendering you unable or maybe just unwilling to think about the final product, to even consider the work you have left. 

Dad has always said that renovation is like eating an elephant - one bite at a time.  And while I do agree...for a dreamer, sometimes it's nice to see an empty plate. 

So, again...NICE WORK MOM AND DAD!   I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to get home and get back to work!

the land before [renovation]

So it recently occurred to me that if you're reading this and you're not one of our lovely friends in Nashville then while you may be a fine study on our new fence, you probably have no idea what our house actually looks like.  So when I say things like "no original trim," you're probably thinking, "Oh, it's a little run down."  Well, I'll let the before photos do the talking.  Indulge...

View from the back door to the front.

The top story of our house.  Built into the roof, it has a lower ceiling and fewer windows, but it does still have all the original five panel doors (score!).

 Super fancy railing. 

 The closed off fireplace in the den.  We have since opened this up and the firebox is currently being rebuilt for a see-through gas fixture.  

View from the formal dining room.  Note the pocket doors. SOLD.

Lovely, isn't it?  These photos were taken around the time of of closing. Since then, we've removed the not-so-antique old furniture (also leftover sinks, toilets, buckets of dirt), opened the fire places, and vacuumed a LOT of dirt.

Above is the beginning of the fireplace opening process.  Dad, I must say, has become quite the mason.  He and Todd have also patched and rebuilt a good portion of the brick wall alongside our property.  Not to mention all the tuck pointing along the outside of our house.

Todd's big task this week got him down and dirty, and I do mean literally.  In order to run the water line from the street to the house we had to dig out a 18-inch deep line from the street into the crawl space so lucky Todd got to head into the land of brown recluse for hours of awkward tunneling.