As promised, I am going to give a fair amount of detail on my endeavor to rid my basement of what I will refer to as dank. Yes, "dank" is an adjective: ...the monster crept out the dank depths of dark cave... I, however, can't currently come up with a better brief term for my basement that lets the reader know exactly what I am talking about. Like the word roadkill, there is no mistaking intent here. If somebody can share with me a better term, I would be happy to adopt it as my own.
I have both read and been told by countless local contractors that foundations in these old houses are a real challenge with which to work. The walls are prone to cracking from settling, this caused largely by the fact that homebuilders in the 1920s did not place footings beneath foundation walls. Their efforts were basically to dig a ditch, put up forms that are hopefully six inches apart, and dump in the concrete. The best explanation I have been given for this is that, besides there being no building code by which to go, digging labor was done by hand and horses had to haul the dirt. Putting in footings would have required substantially more digging, more horses, more hay... It is clear that building engineers understood the benefits of footings. You need not venture any further than the block of concrete smack dab in the middle of my beloved basement that holds up the chimney stack. This block has a much larger footprint than the tower of bricks it supports, and was clearly designed such that the masonry column above it would never shift an inch. What baffles me more than the complete lack of foundation footings is the absence of any rebar in the foundation. Even without footings, a little bit of rebar could slow or stop the walls from cracking and settling. Was rebar a comparatively expensive item back then?
The first task I undertook was what will certainly be the simplest task in the entire basement project: demolition of the acoustic tile ceiling. The dank crept in on me as I carefully pried from the furring strips nailed to the floor joists. To describe my evening underground as a dusty affair understates the experience. Being as careful as possible to remove each 18" tile intact, I had to fidget with pry bars and nail pullers. And the dank enveloped me. But, three hours later, all debris was bagged and stacked neatly. All furring lumber now sits in the driveway. Each rainfall releases a new dose of dank into the neighborhood air. Anybody that has walked past a home construction dumpster in these parts knows the scent of dank. So...is it okay to just leave the nails in this wood? I am guessing that it gets pulverized into little pieces somewhere. Does the pulverizer care if there are nails? My best estimate suggests it would take another three hours to rid the pile of dank of its nails. For now, I have directed my children to stay clear of this hazard, having offered graphic descriptions of tetanus shots awaiting those that venture too close.
The best news to date is that the removal of both the acoustic tile and the oversize furring strips has easily gained me an inch of head height, even after new drywall goes up in the future. This seemingly small gain means the world when head height is exactly at the code minimum 7' clearance. I am not going to go hang suspended lighting in celebration, but am excited nonetheless.
The adventure continues later...
Monday, October 15, 2012
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A River Runs Through It
My young son asked this morning, "Daddy, have you seen the Star Wars movie where five battle droids come over to the good side?" Each day that I contemplate what to do with this old house leaves me feeling like I am headed to the dark side. "No son, I haven't seen that one." Every dank corner of the basement, every musty attic nook leaves me feeling like a prisoner on a remote planet in some underground Star Wars mine.
When the English muffin I just slathered in oily peanut butter and jam landed face-down on the kitchen floor, I predicted it would be one of those days - limited productivity in getting towards a "home solution" for my growing family. I popped another muffin in the toaster, eventually upping my meal size to a total of 1 1/2 slices (I just couldn't bring myself to salvage the half stuck to the floor) - not bad.
With our pre-construction house in chaos, I force myself to embrace the 1 1/2 slice view - with the curtains pulled open on this drizzly morning, I see green and trees and flowers blooming in early spring, hearing only the faintest whistle of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe engines roaring eastward toward the Columbia River Gorge. This house - or more accurately this neighborhood - is at least 1 1/2 English muffin slices. It is hard to imagine that we are mere minutes from the bustle of downtown. I'll have another muffin with peanut butter please...
What better place to start a home remodel project than the basement? George Nash, in his book Renovating Old Houses, certainly makes it clear that this is the place to start. Where else could you possibly get less bang for your buck than repairing underground concrete walls, replacing leaky water supply lines, and upgrading dated HVAC equipment? Yes, it is the responsible thing to do.
But in all likelihood, it is the place that former homeowners have most neglected. It is certainly hard to legitimize sinking a third of the remodel budget into the underbelly of this house when the biggest issue we face on a daily basis is space. My wife swears that she cannot go another year without the addition of a second bathroom. The fact that she has survived four years in this cottage while sharing a solitary commode with three boys (including me), is testament to her strength as a human and her desire to stay in this neighborhood [I hear that faint whistle of the train again...].
So this is as good a time as any to take stock in the 'below-grade' goings on for our house. For starters, the water supply lines are shot. I had a plumber out to investigate a dripping pipe four years ago. He gave to me what was clearly a well-rehearsed speech intended for all his clients that live in the old part of town. "Well...if I touch that pipe, that will break the next fitting, which will break the next fitting...and basically I'll end up replacing your entire supply system. In fact, I just did this last week..." His advice was to wrap a salted rag around it for a few weeks and the ensuing encrustation of rust would stop the leak. He concluded this lesson in witchcraft by telling me to give him a call when I decided to replace the whole system. Well, that time is now. Unfortunately, the plumbing portion of the project pretty much falls outside the budget constraints we've established, enabling us to deliver on some of the non-negotiable items (think: second bathroom). So that leaves me to upgrade the water service... this will certainly be the source of discussion in future postings.
Where are we? Did I mentioned the HVAC system dates to 1985? To call it HVAC is a bit generous, suggesting we actually have AC. That isn't the case. We (and apparently all preceding habitants) depend on the reliably cool night air of Portland, combined with creative application of window fans to bring us summertime comfort. Somehow, the old 80% efficient furnace keeps turning over. Well, that isn't entirely true. At the coldest part of this winter, it stopped working. Period. Prior to this episode, I knew absolutely nothing about furnaces. I can proudly (??) say now that I know something about how they work. I have learned that many furnaces are code-equipped with a sensor switch that shuts off the system entirely when the blower door is opened, analogous to the switch on a washing machine lid - apparently in an effort to keep the operator from sticking their hand in the spinning motor or getting electrocuted, or both. After dissecting various other components in the beast, I discovered that the pressure switch is prone to shorting out when I accidentally leaned on it and the furnace came to life (!).
It is hard to get it right with words my frustration leading up to this discovery. The repair involved removing the failed switch and (against building code) inserting five cents worth of copper wire jumper. This isn't the type of fix I would normally pursue. Something I haven't yet mentioned is that the entire HVAC system is slated for replacement at the end of home construction. I am ethically/morally/genetically opposed to putting any capital into something headed for the scrap yard by summertime. I would like to say the problem ends there, but it simply doesn't: a mere two days prior to the arrival of another well-advertised cold snap of the winter, it quit again. This time, however, there were some telltale symptoms that lead me directly to the cause: a fried blower motor (kill the electricity when opening that door!). The overwhelming smell of overheating electrical equipment and the hot-to-the-touch motor sent me looking for a replacement. The 'gang' at Conrey Electric (http://www.conrey.net/ ) set me up with a reasonably priced replacement motor and we are making heat again - just in time for the temperature drop. The $120 spent there certainly beats out the multiple cases of 'EnviroLogs' we envisioned having to burn as an alternate solution to our winter heating woes.
I close out this posting with the briefest mention of issues I face in trying to repair and seal the inside of crumbly basement walls. As I try to wrap my head around the not insignificant challenges that any basement remodeler faces, I am left thinking during Pacific Northwest rainy days of the title of a favorite Norman Maclean book, A River Runs Through It. No trout swimming in our basement, but there are countless rivulets that meander from behind the washer/dryer across cold concrete to the sole floor drain. While I wish it wouldn't, I am guessing the effort to mitigate this challenge will occupy a ton of emotional and physical toil, and likely get translated onto these pages.
When the English muffin I just slathered in oily peanut butter and jam landed face-down on the kitchen floor, I predicted it would be one of those days - limited productivity in getting towards a "home solution" for my growing family. I popped another muffin in the toaster, eventually upping my meal size to a total of 1 1/2 slices (I just couldn't bring myself to salvage the half stuck to the floor) - not bad.
With our pre-construction house in chaos, I force myself to embrace the 1 1/2 slice view - with the curtains pulled open on this drizzly morning, I see green and trees and flowers blooming in early spring, hearing only the faintest whistle of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe engines roaring eastward toward the Columbia River Gorge. This house - or more accurately this neighborhood - is at least 1 1/2 English muffin slices. It is hard to imagine that we are mere minutes from the bustle of downtown. I'll have another muffin with peanut butter please...
What better place to start a home remodel project than the basement? George Nash, in his book Renovating Old Houses, certainly makes it clear that this is the place to start. Where else could you possibly get less bang for your buck than repairing underground concrete walls, replacing leaky water supply lines, and upgrading dated HVAC equipment? Yes, it is the responsible thing to do.
But in all likelihood, it is the place that former homeowners have most neglected. It is certainly hard to legitimize sinking a third of the remodel budget into the underbelly of this house when the biggest issue we face on a daily basis is space. My wife swears that she cannot go another year without the addition of a second bathroom. The fact that she has survived four years in this cottage while sharing a solitary commode with three boys (including me), is testament to her strength as a human and her desire to stay in this neighborhood [I hear that faint whistle of the train again...].
So this is as good a time as any to take stock in the 'below-grade' goings on for our house. For starters, the water supply lines are shot. I had a plumber out to investigate a dripping pipe four years ago. He gave to me what was clearly a well-rehearsed speech intended for all his clients that live in the old part of town. "Well...if I touch that pipe, that will break the next fitting, which will break the next fitting...and basically I'll end up replacing your entire supply system. In fact, I just did this last week..." His advice was to wrap a salted rag around it for a few weeks and the ensuing encrustation of rust would stop the leak. He concluded this lesson in witchcraft by telling me to give him a call when I decided to replace the whole system. Well, that time is now. Unfortunately, the plumbing portion of the project pretty much falls outside the budget constraints we've established, enabling us to deliver on some of the non-negotiable items (think: second bathroom). So that leaves me to upgrade the water service... this will certainly be the source of discussion in future postings.
Where are we? Did I mentioned the HVAC system dates to 1985? To call it HVAC is a bit generous, suggesting we actually have AC. That isn't the case. We (and apparently all preceding habitants) depend on the reliably cool night air of Portland, combined with creative application of window fans to bring us summertime comfort. Somehow, the old 80% efficient furnace keeps turning over. Well, that isn't entirely true. At the coldest part of this winter, it stopped working. Period. Prior to this episode, I knew absolutely nothing about furnaces. I can proudly (??) say now that I know something about how they work. I have learned that many furnaces are code-equipped with a sensor switch that shuts off the system entirely when the blower door is opened, analogous to the switch on a washing machine lid - apparently in an effort to keep the operator from sticking their hand in the spinning motor or getting electrocuted, or both. After dissecting various other components in the beast, I discovered that the pressure switch is prone to shorting out when I accidentally leaned on it and the furnace came to life (!).
The offending switch removed
It is hard to get it right with words my frustration leading up to this discovery. The repair involved removing the failed switch and (against building code) inserting five cents worth of copper wire jumper. This isn't the type of fix I would normally pursue. Something I haven't yet mentioned is that the entire HVAC system is slated for replacement at the end of home construction. I am ethically/morally/genetically opposed to putting any capital into something headed for the scrap yard by summertime. I would like to say the problem ends there, but it simply doesn't: a mere two days prior to the arrival of another well-advertised cold snap of the winter, it quit again. This time, however, there were some telltale symptoms that lead me directly to the cause: a fried blower motor (kill the electricity when opening that door!). The overwhelming smell of overheating electrical equipment and the hot-to-the-touch motor sent me looking for a replacement. The 'gang' at Conrey Electric (http://www.conrey.net/ ) set me up with a reasonably priced replacement motor and we are making heat again - just in time for the temperature drop. The $120 spent there certainly beats out the multiple cases of 'EnviroLogs' we envisioned having to burn as an alternate solution to our winter heating woes.
I close out this posting with the briefest mention of issues I face in trying to repair and seal the inside of crumbly basement walls. As I try to wrap my head around the not insignificant challenges that any basement remodeler faces, I am left thinking during Pacific Northwest rainy days of the title of a favorite Norman Maclean book, A River Runs Through It. No trout swimming in our basement, but there are countless rivulets that meander from behind the washer/dryer across cold concrete to the sole floor drain. While I wish it wouldn't, I am guessing the effort to mitigate this challenge will occupy a ton of emotional and physical toil, and likely get translated onto these pages.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Home Remodeling - Where It All Begins
The journey that my family and I are about to embark on began with the purchase of a modest 1927 cottage in Portland, Oregon a little more than four years ago. My wife, Jen, made me promise that I would not initiate any discussions of how to 'improve' the house for at least one year after moving in. True to my word, I kept thoughts of home improvement to myself. It was Jen that couldn't resist the urge to talk of the future plans for the house within months of move in... And so it began.
To put this in perspective, I must back up a couple months before the house purchase was actually finalized. I was getting daily feeds from our dedicated property broker on all new home listings in this part of town. Each house we visited left us asking the question, "gee, why did they do that?". After countless open houses and home tours, I was resigned to finding a place that hadn't yet experienced a botched home makeover, yet remained in our price range. Did I mention that we were in a time crunch? We had spent the entire summer living out of suitcases following relocation from New England to Portland. Our possessions were slowly cooking, locked up in some non-climate controlled warehouse in the blistering summer heat of Sacramento, while we looked for a house. While there was something liberating about the simplicity of living with less, the reality of registering kids for school in fall - any school - was beginning to wear on me. Besides, I could only take the kids to the park and wading pools around town so many times...
So when I pulled up to this cute little cottage on my 50th day of looking at houses, I was drawn in by the 'cute factor', the fact that it hadn't yet suffered from any seriously blundered makeover, and was situated in a most adorably quiet neighborhood. I was hooked. My wife was less than enamored. Her visit later that day yielded these words: "No way - that house is much too small." I was crushed, but vowed to keep moving forward. Fate would have it that a few days later we found a nearby house that seemed perfect. Our effort to purchase it, however, was thwarted by multiple bids and some serious disclosure items that would never be resolved. In the heat of it all, Jen, to my surprise, blurted out that she wanted to buy the undersized cottage. We had not discussed it in the intervening days. "But it is much too small" I countered, freeing myself from any future liability in the decision we were about to make. Well, the rest of the process is unimportant at this point. What matters is that we have been crammed in our undersized cute cottage for four years now.
It therefore came as no surprise that Jen was the first to crack, with her mention of how we could make this tiny house with 'three bedrooms' and one bathroom work for our family of four. So, while this is where the story really begins, it is only now - four years later that we are ready to act on the primordial discussions that all home owners in our neighborhood have at one time or another: How do we fit ourselves and our belongings into such a tiny little house for the long term?
With that, I have suffered homeowner angst through the past four years. Would it be better to just put out the 'For Sale' sign and buy a house elsewhere in the neighborhood - one that is already 'done'? The standard way of describing our house to somebody that has never seen it before is that it is a perfect house for "a little old lady with a couple cats". The look I get from folks when I talk of felines and little old ladies tells me that the right thing to do is move on. Well, we are on our third architect and second general contractor in trying to answer the question, Do we stay or do we go now?
We have dumped countless thousands of dollars into architectural and engineering fees in our best attempt at due diligence in answering this question. You see, the problem is that we love the neighborhood and the neighbors that go with it. We adore the place - it is only the undersized and inefficient house that challenges me so, causing significant sleep loss.
I am told by our third (and final!) architect that our cottage is a kit house from Sears, though I am yet to come up with a definitive identification. Perhaps somebody in the blogosphere can help me with that one at a later date. I am sure she is correct that it is a kit house - our next door neighbor has a nearly identical house constructed by the same builder ca 1926-1927. Alas, I have talked with several friends that swear they have attended social functions in houses identical to ours in different parts of the city. While that is cute and all, my question is, How?
How in the hell does somebody host a social function in a house identical to ours? With a meager footprint of 906 square feet, there is scarcely room to host a party. Anybody brave enough to call them self a chef in our house is treated to the ability of being able to open the refrigerator, stir pots on the stove, open the dishwasher, or work at the sink - all without have to do more than rotate on an axis. Future discussions will cover it all: architects, contractors, hidden surprises, other philosophical musings as we head down the path of no return.
To put this in perspective, I must back up a couple months before the house purchase was actually finalized. I was getting daily feeds from our dedicated property broker on all new home listings in this part of town. Each house we visited left us asking the question, "gee, why did they do that?". After countless open houses and home tours, I was resigned to finding a place that hadn't yet experienced a botched home makeover, yet remained in our price range. Did I mention that we were in a time crunch? We had spent the entire summer living out of suitcases following relocation from New England to Portland. Our possessions were slowly cooking, locked up in some non-climate controlled warehouse in the blistering summer heat of Sacramento, while we looked for a house. While there was something liberating about the simplicity of living with less, the reality of registering kids for school in fall - any school - was beginning to wear on me. Besides, I could only take the kids to the park and wading pools around town so many times...
So when I pulled up to this cute little cottage on my 50th day of looking at houses, I was drawn in by the 'cute factor', the fact that it hadn't yet suffered from any seriously blundered makeover, and was situated in a most adorably quiet neighborhood. I was hooked. My wife was less than enamored. Her visit later that day yielded these words: "No way - that house is much too small." I was crushed, but vowed to keep moving forward. Fate would have it that a few days later we found a nearby house that seemed perfect. Our effort to purchase it, however, was thwarted by multiple bids and some serious disclosure items that would never be resolved. In the heat of it all, Jen, to my surprise, blurted out that she wanted to buy the undersized cottage. We had not discussed it in the intervening days. "But it is much too small" I countered, freeing myself from any future liability in the decision we were about to make. Well, the rest of the process is unimportant at this point. What matters is that we have been crammed in our undersized cute cottage for four years now.
It therefore came as no surprise that Jen was the first to crack, with her mention of how we could make this tiny house with 'three bedrooms' and one bathroom work for our family of four. So, while this is where the story really begins, it is only now - four years later that we are ready to act on the primordial discussions that all home owners in our neighborhood have at one time or another: How do we fit ourselves and our belongings into such a tiny little house for the long term?
With that, I have suffered homeowner angst through the past four years. Would it be better to just put out the 'For Sale' sign and buy a house elsewhere in the neighborhood - one that is already 'done'? The standard way of describing our house to somebody that has never seen it before is that it is a perfect house for "a little old lady with a couple cats". The look I get from folks when I talk of felines and little old ladies tells me that the right thing to do is move on. Well, we are on our third architect and second general contractor in trying to answer the question, Do we stay or do we go now?
We have dumped countless thousands of dollars into architectural and engineering fees in our best attempt at due diligence in answering this question. You see, the problem is that we love the neighborhood and the neighbors that go with it. We adore the place - it is only the undersized and inefficient house that challenges me so, causing significant sleep loss.
I am told by our third (and final!) architect that our cottage is a kit house from Sears, though I am yet to come up with a definitive identification. Perhaps somebody in the blogosphere can help me with that one at a later date. I am sure she is correct that it is a kit house - our next door neighbor has a nearly identical house constructed by the same builder ca 1926-1927. Alas, I have talked with several friends that swear they have attended social functions in houses identical to ours in different parts of the city. While that is cute and all, my question is, How?
How in the hell does somebody host a social function in a house identical to ours? With a meager footprint of 906 square feet, there is scarcely room to host a party. Anybody brave enough to call them self a chef in our house is treated to the ability of being able to open the refrigerator, stir pots on the stove, open the dishwasher, or work at the sink - all without have to do more than rotate on an axis. Future discussions will cover it all: architects, contractors, hidden surprises, other philosophical musings as we head down the path of no return.
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