A Light in the Attic

Yes, folks, the train is rolling again!

When you spend a solid two months  of your renovation in some odd state of chaos, where projects are determined at random and tend to be nearly invisible after completing them, it sure feels good get to something big done...and yesterday we did! 

Despite my parents warnings at the beginning of this project about how winter would be slow and disheartening - nothing exciting about spending an entire afternoon chiseling away pieces of the ceiling framing to make it perfectly level - I, of course, let it get to me.  Really, though, it takes a warrior not to loose steam when you know your Saturday will be spent filling in missing pieces of insulation or hanging more can lights (those suckers have the most annoying wobbly legs) or any other odd tasks that begs the question, when is sheetrock going in??

BUT yesterday?  We did WINDOWS.  And you know what?  We all eight of the downstairs replacements in one single day.  Bam!  And finally, I have something exciting to take a photo of, and thus, a reason to blog. 

Our beautiful house was blessed with some beautiful 78 inch tall windows all around it's downstairs, but sadly, over the years the pulley systems gave out on one end or another and they were painted shut (in red, then in black, then blue, the green, the white...).  We considered having them re-weighted and hung, but we also considered our budget and the relative energy savings we would encounter if we switched to something 100 years newer.  Or really, Dad did, but I didn't fight him on this one.  We did leave the original large square windows at the front of the home with their leaded glass panes because that represents a huge portion of the homes great character, but the other 9 windows downstairs we decided to swap out (or add in as two of the windows were missing all together).

We started in the morning with Dad's enthusiastic welcome greeting ("Today, we are doing windows!"), and hit the ground running, me helping Dad build the frames while Todd worked one window ahead of us, ripping out the old frame and the mounds of demo crud that was inevitably sitting atop each one.  Just when you think the house is getting cleaner....

By lunchtime, we had two windows in place, and then by 3pm we had five.  

At 3pm, I was beginning to doubt our ability to finish in one day, and dusk was already threatening, but we pursued.  

Now that we really had a rhythm to our work, we were really starting to move along.  The last two windows in the music room went up like lightning.  Booyah!  All in a days work.  

We still have to add a bit of trim along the outside to cover some gaps (the windows the company sent were a bit different in size than the test window Dad ordered last summer), but wow - what a difference it makes to have clean, usable windows in the place.

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOW

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOW WAS TOTALLY MISSING

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOWS

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOWS

AFTER - KITCHEN WINDOWS. Who wouldn't be excited about all that natural light??

AFTER 

Baby, It's Cold Outside

If you haven't spent a winter in Nashville, I'll go ahead and be perfectly honest.  It's ugly.  Like, really ugly.  I used to think Virginia winters were about as bleak as could be, and in some parts of Virginia that still holds true.  My one winter in each Blacksburg and Roanoke were both cloudy and sunless but even those bleak, dreary days held - just above my head - the ripe possibly of snow, the quiet soaring feeling than at any moment the flakes would fall and the world would effectively stop.  But in Nashville where the temperature hovers just above freezing for weeks on end, the dreary skies only promise more clouds or, at best, rain.

It's rather unsettling.  I've spent the past month and a half of quiet mornings huddled with a computer (or an ipad or a phone) or a book on the couch glancing every so out the window to my left just hoping to see something, anything of the sun.  Running has become nothing short of a chore.  Mornings feel like giant weights that press on my eyelids, successfully trying to keep me in bed longer, and even simple chores that involve going outside (Get the mail?! Out there?! Are you kidding?!) are like Olympic events I can hardly fathom to achieve.

Needless to say, house work has been nothing short of BLAH.  That in combination with the holidays and multiple trips here and there has made house progress rather slowwww.  But we're still persisting.  I say 'we' as if we all have some equal part in the house progress when rather, Dad is persisting.  Casting aside all dread of the unpleasant weather, he dons those flannel lined work clothes every afternoon and weekend to work on plumbing or electricity - which, of course have consumed us for the past month and a half.

We're really just starting electricity, but plumbing is seriously taking form.  Dad had actually finished last month, but he had to change a couple things after the inspection due to differences in county code.  Now that Todd's home, things are starting to move a little faster.  He and I helped Dad by hanging some can lights in the kitchen and hallway, then Todd went to work wiring them this weekend.

Electricity, I must say, is pretty cool.  The minute Dad started showing me the "hot," "neutral," and "ground" wires, I immediately begin craving my old Physics II notes because while I aced that class nearly ten years ago, I couldn't even remember the parts of a circuit today.  Not all of us are natural geniuses.

[Side note: Dad first wired a room when he was 8 years old.  Yeah, 8.  Without any help from an adult, he just went to work re-wiring his basement.  Imagine that on a bumper sticker.  My child is a self-taught electrician.]

Anyway, thank god for a little Google-ed circuit refreshment.  It occurs to me often that things might move faster if I wasn't asking so many dumb questions ("WAIT - Why the neutral still hot and the ground not?"), but fortunately, Dad's patient enough to answer.  So despite my many questions, things are still moving.

A Brief History of Time

There's a certain feeling you might know when you step into an old house.  It's not the draft from bad insulation or the smell of a musty dirt-floored basement.  It's not the the awkward feeling you get looking at goopy layers of paint or wavy plaster walls.  It's not even determined (as I have argued and will often argue) by the proportions of the trim or the height of the doors.  It has to do with history. 

An old house is packed with secrets, filled with memories.  In every crevice, in every time-worn crack, are the minutes, the seconds, the stories of other people lives'.  All the days that passed in birthday cakes, in Sunday dinners, in sneaking out, in crying babies, in tears and laughter and love - those days happened here.  The most basic and most intricate weavings of human lives into the passage of time happened here.  I'll never see them.  But our house has. 

And so I'm convinced that it's not fancy woodwork or towering ceilings that makes a house so inviting.  It's the history insulation, if you will, the packing of so many memories into its walls, that keeps it warm.  Don't you wonder even you walk through the front doors of an old home, who walked here before me?  Who danced here before me?

This doesn't mean I'll settle for anything less than classically proportioned trim, however.  [<---Did you see that, Mom and Dad?  It will fit into our budget even if that means leaving something out...something of Todd's, of course.  Hehe.  I kid, I kid.  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...]

Now we could spend our time in the house just wondering, just imagining the lives before us.  We could dream and ponder and piece together.  Or, better yet, we could get a little light on the Cleveland's first 100 years.  Lucky for us, one of the house's previous occupants contacted us when we first began work on the house this June.  Ms. Judy, as she is known, is the one of the sweetest and most fantastic people we have met since starting this whole thing.  We were first introduced when she stopped by one afternoon while Todd was busy staining the back deck.  It turns out, this was Judy's childhood home, and when she saw that someone had finally bought and was beginning to the restore the place, curiosity got the best of her.  She has stopped by on several occasions since and given us little details into her many memories growing up here.  It's amazing to think how fortunately we met her.  You can tell just in a few minutes of talking just how many emotional ties she has to this place, how many of her own memories are woven into its walls.  And it's fantastic that we get to hear about them.

It's also started a bit of a side project for me that involves a different kind of digging (no shovels and dirt for this one!).  A couple hours at the Nashville Public Library and a few roles of microfilm later, I've come up with a list of names of the house's previous occupants.  I've also researched through some of the area's original maps to see what went up where and when.  At this point, I'm not sure what I can do with the information, where it all will go, or what it all will do.  But the other night, some hours into internet searching, while reading the heartfelt obituary of the original owner's late grandson, I realized that maybe recognition is all they need.  Just to read about them, to know they existed, that their stories are here just waiting to welcome in our own - maybe that's what it's about.  Either way, I've got much more digging to do! 

1920 Census records

Original Nashville city map publication.  Started in 1914(?) and updated through 1930.  The cut and pasted clippings are changes made after the 1914 publication.

1918 Nashville City Directory

Intergalactic Insulation

I'm sorry... I just had to.  That title, this suit:

Dad, from the planet Spray Foam-ia, getting ready to spray foam insulation on the exterior walls.  

Two weeks ago, we began the tedious process of insulation, otherwise known as "how not to have a $700 heating bill."  Dad, the ultimate promoter of "doing things right," has developed the most cost and energy efficient method of insulating our home using a variety of materials including foam, wood, and our every last bit of patience.  

Here's the breakdown:

1.  Wood. Using 8 inch strips of plywood, we blocked and attached cut pieces between the beams to block airflow in the ceiling of the first story. After we placed the first set of blocks on the outside, we attached another set where the second story floor meets the wall to direct air intake from outside up and out the roof rather than in and through the floor.
(Side note: anytime we move to an untouched area of the house - ie the bottom line of the roof above the first floor - we find all sorts of gross and nasty treasures including but not limited to: decades old sweaty rags, birds' nests, pieces of old packaging boxes, and tons and tons and tons of black, sooty, dirt. When you clean, you sneeze black for about 24 hours...)

2. Seafoam green foam. To seal off large amounts of airflow in the wood sheath around the outside of our house, Dad used this highly toxic yet effective spray foam to cover the insides of the exterior walls. A nasty project, but one that has already given us a little sound proofing...not to mention a quite fashionable temporary wall color (ahem).

3. Foil backed foam. This dense, solid sheet foam is backed by foil on the side that butts up to the roof allowing heat to be reflected away from the interior. Using short blocks of wood, we attached these long boards to all our exterior walls in the second story leaving about an inch of room between the roof so air and moisture can travel up and our the roof vents.  Then when we get to - drum roll, please - caulk between every crack and connection.  For the larger gaps and those we can't fill with solid insulation, Mom fills in using a spray foam.  (One of her favorite activities is getting spray foam in her hair. No...wait...I take that back. Her real favorite activity is cutting her hair to get the spray foam out. Eek!)

Next up, we'll use even denser solid foam sheets topped with a 2x4 on each wood rafter upstairs to prevent any airflow between the wood beams themselves. I told you that Dad was a thorough man! Then we'll cover ev.er.y.thing. in the old pink panther fiberglass insulation and then hopefully call it a day (or a month)!

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful...

....Thank goodness we've moved indoors!

A cold front hit us hard this week bringing highs in the 30's and low 40's and some pretty ugly rain showers to top it off. I must say, it sure is nice to be out of the wind and rain. We're still working in 2,500 square feet of studs, but we've begun the long insulation process so the rather large (and rather loud) kerosene heater can build up a good bit of heat in that place. It's no sauna, I assure you, but our fingers aren't going numb either.

In celebration of a completed exterior, I'm just going to give you all the eye candy: photos!  But first some more reading (hehe).

First of all, painting. Ohmygosh painting. I really have to give all the painting credit to my mother who kicked some serious you-know-what painting the exterior of our house.  I may lovingly call her the paint nazi, but in all seriousness, she knows what's she's doing! Climbing ladders like a madwoman, dangling off the edge of the roof on a very dubiously placed ladder, caulking, sanding, scraping, and rolling away - the woman is a powerhouse. Her "work clothes" are a great testament to her painting capabilities - or maybe just a good illustration of how much she paints.

About a month ago, we noticed a hired gentleman doing some repair work on the beautiful but unkempt farmhouse Victorian next door. I was planting our brand new magnolia in the front yard, and I asked him a few questions, wondering if our little exterior update had motivated the owner next door. Sure enough, the next day we saw next door a whole crew of men preparing to paint, so westopped by to chat again. Mom asked them how many days it would take for them to finish the paint and not surprisingly they said three. Days. Three days. Total. In comparison, ours took weeks, months even.  I could have been disheartened, but here's the difference:  Mom then asked how many coats of paint they would do and if they would repair or replace any of the siding.  Again not surprisingly they said one coat and no repair work.  In comparison, we did three and a whooooole lot of repair work.  That owner?  She'll be paying them again in a few years.  Us?  We're not touching that paint again.  Just another lesson in how often times doing things yourself = doing things better (Dad's mantra?).

Now behold!

Not only have we finished exterior painting, but we've added all the necessary finishing touches like...

...A newly refinished front door with an ornate and shiny door plate/handle...

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

....Front porch lights....

...Stylish and chic house numbers...

BEFORE

AFTER

...A mission style chandelier for our cute little side porch...

....Flower beds along the front, complete with seasonal blooms and perennial standards...

BEFORE

AFTER

...A modern roof for our lower back deck...

...A brick landing pad under the street gate entry with stepping stone path...

AFTER

...Stepping stones to connect the side and front porches as well as stones by the man gate in the backyard...

BEFORE

AFTER

...Stained fence and adjacent flower bed...

BEFORE

AFTER

...and last but not least, thanks to Todd's lovely mother, we planted a fabulously southern magnolia tree to grow with us through out the years.

So in summary...

BEFORE

AFTER

We've saved one last project for Thanksgiving weekend: the small, front picket fence.  Todd's family will be coming to celebrate the the weekend with us, and they're looking to get their hands dirty and make their mark on the house.  That's help we can be thankful for!

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!