It's still raining.

And the wind has kicked up and oh, yes, tore off all of the felt paper the box gutter fellas put down. It's all over the yard now.

And I think they must have pulled off some of the flashing from around the chimney and the apex of the west roof line, because we're getting as much water inside as the Titanic.

I did take a picture of what I rigged up in the meantime to scuttle the water outside instead of pooling (or freezing) on the floors of both the first and second floor. It's rather rudimentary, but it's working like a charm so far.

If you ever have a REALLY leaky roof and need to divert some moisture out a nearby window, I suggest buying a large roll of plastic and grab your staple gun.

We were told that the Benchmark guys would be back when the roofing materials came in (should be another week, week-and-a-half or so) but I really hope we don't have to wait the entire time with no flashing on the roof.

The winds were howling and we noticed that every once in a while, we'd hear the existing metal roof being picked up and off the sheathing. Hubby wanted to get up on the roof and secure the roofing materials so that we didn't have an even bigger problem than we have now, but I wasn't about to agree to that. Gusts were recorded between 47-50 mph. Yeah, go on, Gidget. I dare ya.

Not on my watch.

The next problem to tackle is the rear door. Everyone seems to think that replacing an exterior door is no big deal. Yeah, that's if you already have a framed in door. -----We don't.

The rough opening for the door is 39" wide by 101.5" tall and 9" deep. The transom was covered over in 1x6 and painted white. The door is
hanging on by a few nails. There's a 6" gap between the 1" door frame on the left side of the door (where the hinges are) and the rough brick exterior wall. If we pull out the door and frame, I fear the lintel above the door will collapse.

I think we'll need to carefully pull the door apart, temporarily support the lintel with a 2x8 and 2- 2x4's on each side, and rebuild the hinge side of the door frame with some connected 2x8's tapconned to the exterior brick, and seal up the gaps with expanding foam sealant. Once the lintel in once again supported, then we can work on the door frame itself.

As you can see in the image here, the pink area is where the lintel is (behind the white painted wood covering). The lintel is supposed to deflect the downward pressure of the wall above the opening towards the side walls left and right of an opening. That's not happening here and explains why there's a small crack in the exterior brick just above the doorway.

You can also see the gaps above the door and on the side. What a pain in the @ss.

On to better news: our first shipment of lumber is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. We bought from Riemeier in Norwood, Ohio and delivery cost is only $35. The lumber is a little bit more versus Home Depot, and I just found out why.

First, the price comparison:

Lumber Size: Riemeier Prices vs. Home Depot $
2x4x10 :......... $2.99........................ $2.69
2x4x16 : ........ $5.69 ........................$4.67
2x8x8 :..........$5.87 ........................ $5.25

So Riemeier is about 5-10% higher in prices, but from what I've seen and what I've been told, unlike the other lumber yards where the toss in about 10% of grade 3 lumber in with their grade 2 lumber and use 5 year old growth, Riemeier uses much older growth lumber (25 years?) so the lumber doesn't twist as soon as you cover it with drywall like the stuff from Home Depot.

I've also been told that the grade 2 lumber is as good quality as grade 1 lumber from Riemeier. I've walked through the drive through (Yes, they have a drive through!) and from what I've seen, the lumber yard is packed with high quality, no warping, no knots, no split lumber.

Also, Home Depot's delivery charge was $65, so if you're getting lumber delivered, overall, it's about the same cost for a small shipment from Riemeier.

But don't take my word for it. Check it out yourself. I'll let you know how it goes from this side when the lumber shipment arrives tomorrow for the reinforcing of the ceiling joists (see bouncy floors previous post) and for furring out the walls with the tapcons.

G'night.

ADDENDUM from M:

We were still shipping a ton of water around the chimney. Actually, because flashing and the cricket were disturbed/destroyed by the roofers and box gutter guys in the process of doing their work and diagnosing the situation, we're bringing in much more water than we were before. I'm getting worried about deterioration of the brick at this point.

Sooooo, I gambled on a bit of spray foam. This isn't a solution, of course, but it is a stop gap measure. I sprayed AMPLE foam between the brick and some goofy framing at the roof line from inside. It took a lot of foam, but it seems that the fast majority of the water is no longer eroding my brick. That should hold if we get some more snow or rain between here and when the roof arrives.

I'm sweating bullets about that roof popping up with high winds, too. I'd rather not lose that, thank you very much. That's a water leak that I can't patch with spray foam. I'll be checking on it this morning.

M

The snow and ice are melting. INTO the house.

The boxgutters, although off to a great start, aren't finished and the ice that is melting off of the roof where the old rotted wood was removed, is running down into the house like a rainstorm.

Sticking my head out of the rooftop window that looks down on the lower gutter, (and after having a gallon of ice cold water dumped on my head) I could see that everywhere the ice melted, it seeped into the rafters, the joists, down the walls, etc. There was a good 1" sheet of ice on the floor on the second floor under where the two rooflines meet at the chimney.

After rigging up a large sheet of plastic in the corner of the room where the leak (a.k.a major holes in the roof) were focused, I was able to staple the plastic to the joists above and the walls and *aim* the chute out of the window.

I am so tired right now, and dirty, and wet. And it's Valentine's Day. I think I'm just going to go to bed, after a very hot, long shower.

Learn from the mistakes of others.

As a young girl growing up, they told me that there's nothing I couldn't do. Apparently they were right.

Today I did the impossible. I burned myself on the.... (big deep breath) .... the dishwasher.

Yes, the dishwasher. While cleaning out the filter element, I pulled out the lower rack, unscrewed the filters and gave the machine a cursory run through with a little bleach. I didn't realize the heat dry switch was on. That little heating element at the bottom of the pan got me good on the top of my hand while reattaching the filters. *&^%#@!*&.

So today's lesson is this: if it's called a "Heating element" we all now know what to expect.

A look at the roof, boxgutter, and floor joists.

Well, the roof work has begun and last Saturday the fellas from Benchmark started working on the box gutters. Woot!

Much of the framing that the gutters sit on was just total rot, so the first thing was to firm up the supports.

The guys made quick work of replacing the bad wood and set up these new frames, seen from the inside of the third floor at the roofline.

I gotta say, they worked all day and into the night when they couldn't work any longer due to darkness taking over.

So far so good. There are actually 2 gutters that need repaired, one on the East side of the house, which is shown below (nice work on the molding, guys!) and the second is perpendicular to this one, and just above the left side of this box gutter where the two angled rooflines meet in the center of the house. That one's still a work in progress... (but what isn't?)


At this point I want to point out that the box gutter on the front of the house is still in decent shape, but we did have one little problem: The electric lines coming into the house from the street were intertwined with the downspout at the front of the house. Matt Maynard (of Benchmark Roofing) pointed out that this could possibly be a danger to him and his crew, justifiably so!

So off we went to put a call in to Duke Energy to resolve the problem. After a quick conversation we were assured that they would send someone out to inspect the lines. Well, I gotta give them credit, they were quick about it.

They came and took down the downspout while we were out.

I think we'll be calling Duke back.
_________________

OK, now on to the floors:
_________________

On the first floor, in the Northeast corner of the house (red arrow in above image), we have a pretty bad rot problem due to a defunct (aka rusted through) vent stack between the first and second floor.

In case I'm not being clear here: Hole in roof --> cast iron vent pipe--> hole in pipe dumping water into the wall and onto the second floor joist, down to the first floor joist, maybe for years now.

After pulling up the floor boards on the first floor where the rot started (trying to preserve as much as I could fo the good sections for use in the repairs we'll be doing in the front 2 rooms) I discovered this:

The top center of this image (Northeast corner of the house) is where the vent stack was dumping water into the house. You can see that the far left joist is gone and some previous repairs were attempted to shore up that corner, but they forgot to fix the problem (the stack pouring water into the house) so it's all still a mess.

But here's the killer.... the floor joists themselves.

Let me start with the history of the house. The east side of this room (about 6'x15') was once an outdoor area with basement access from the outside. (see image below) You can see the framing for the door in the floor in the Northeast corner of the room. Since this was once an outdoor area, the floor joists are pretty stable where they once stood under the exterior wall, about 6 feet in from the current East wall.

To support the floor when the original owners decided to expand the back room and encompass the basement access, (expanding the room by 6'x15') they sistered some beams to the existing joists and supported them on the existing foundation.

But then, someone decided to dig.

They dug out a lot of the dirt and half of the wall that was once supporting the exterior wall. They put in some lovely duct work that now is total cr@p.

So now we have this:

Yes, these joists (a solid 3"x10" beams) are only connected by three nails each and overlapping by only 4 inches with no support whatsoever underneath.

The scary thing is, they're REALLY stable.

We'll be shoring these up with a 2x6 crosswise underneath where the joists are joined together and support them with a metal post underneath.

The we'll be placing 2 layers of .5" OSB on top for the flooring.... as soon as we have a roof that doesn't dump water back into the house. :-)

Rehabbing an Old House Manual--Step One

It's time to back up a little bit, to the beginning.

The idea in creating this blog was to provide step by step guidance to those who would follow in our footsteps (as it were). As such, I'm going to back up a bit to step one. Actually, a bit before step one.

Pre-Step One:
The first thing one needs to do in this process is to assess what one is up for and what skills one has. If you don't like repairing things or working with tools and you don't want to learn, don't do this type of project. Not unless you have deep, DEEP pockets and don't care about money.

You should like to learn and like to do projects. You should have some facility with tools and have a desire to gain some new expertise. You should love old homes and the history of them. You should have vision and creativity. You should be willing to do your homework.

Where I started was here:

Renovating Brick Houses: For Yourself or for Investment by T. Newell and Phillip J. Decker

Frankly, this is a bit dated, but the concepts are sound and very hands on. I got a lot out of it. Don't be afraid to do lots of reading to determine what is in store for you if you do this project and how much you're up for.

So, anyway, once you've established that doing a rehab is what you want to do and within the realm of possibility and financial responsibility, then you can move on to Step 1: Finding a Property.

The first part is to decide where to look. We chose the N.Ky Riviera because it wasn't Cincinnati, it was full of wonderful old brick homes, and was much more foot traffic friendly and all in all more like a real city with real neighborhoods. Of course, the N. Ky Riviera is several Cities (Dayton, Bellevue, Newport, Covington, and Ludlow), but you know what I mean. Once you've got a zone, there are some wonderful tools to help you. Indispensable is Google Maps. It really helps to be able to see the land around a property quickly. If you want off street parking, you can usually tell if such is possible with a quick search. Zillow.com is also useful in researching property values and trends, though I wouldn't rely upon those too heavily.

You'll probably want to find a long suffering real estate agent and work through their listings that meet your criteria. Do them and yourself a favor and research the listings that you think are interesting before you call your agent. You'll be looking at a lot of homes and you don't want to waste his or her time. Google helps on that front as does a good real estate web site. We liked Sibcy Cline . Additionally, you'll want to get in touch with the housing department of whatever municipality you decide on. Often they will own several properties that they are eager to sell to motivated rehabbers. Sometimes, they'll have incentives for you as well; Tax abatement or grants or loans. Don't assume that any price for a property is set in stone, either. You'll also want to look up realty auctioneers. This can be a great way to find a real bargain.

And, don't forget just driving around looking for "for sale" signs in neighborhoods that you're interested in.

Do take your time. You're going to be making a pretty sizable investment in time and money and you don't want to rush things. Try to remain emotionally detached from the process. It took us 6 months or more to find a place and then another year to actually buy it. Believe it or not, we were ready to walk right up the the closing, if necessary. Remember, buying a house is very emotional. That can cloud your judgment or allow others to perhaps maneuver you into an inadvisable selection. Keep your cool, do your homework, and do your leg work. This tilts the odds in your favor.


Next, Step 2: Selecting a Property

We have a roofer.... whew!

I tell you, it's been hell finding a roofer who will work with this specified metal--AND who will return your phone calls.

We currently have a metal roof which has seen the last of its days... all 150 years of them. Not bad for a roof lifetime, eh? Also a darn good reason to put another one on, especially now that we've found good and cheap ($160/sq) metal roofing through Modern Builders. They have American Building Components Residential Metal Roofing 26 gauge SL-16 AND it is approved by the City of Covington (CVG) Historic Preservation Officer(s).

We're picking the light stone color, which also got the thumbs up from CVG, as it's pretty close to what we have currently.











We've just been waiting for someone to return a call.

We've contacted more than 20 roofers, some of them just don't do metal roofs, and that's fine. Some of them say they'll get back with you, and then they never do. We've talked to a Lot of them. Maybe it's that it's mid-winter, I don't know. It's a relatively mild winter this year. (Good for us, btw). I'm thinking they just don't want the cash. Oh well.

So here's the deal.... if you are using HUD money to do a rehab in CVG, your contractors MUST be licensed in CVG (not just the state) and be insured, and whatever other hoops CVG wants. I think that cut a lot of roofers out of the loop right away, and I understand that.

But the two that rose to the top were WrightSide Roofing and Benchmark Roofing. They both are licensed and insured, both do metal roofs, and seem like professional operations. Nice guys, too and know what they're doing. If you're looking for a metal roof, I'd give them both a call if you're in the NKY or Southern Ohio area.

We decided to go with Matt Maynard of Benchmark Roofing.
Here's basically what we were quoted:

"Remove all existing metal roofing panels from entire house. Renail all decking. Inspect decking, and if necessary replace any deficient decking at an additional charge of 25.00 per sheet if plywood, and 2.70 per linear ft if 1" pine decking. Install ice guard at gutterlines. Install #30 felt underlayment over remaining exposure. Install new 16" wide, 26GA, prefinished metal roof panels in customer's choice of color. Install factory drip edge and eave closure trim. Install sidewall flashing along rear knee wall and sides of front chimney. Install new apron flashing on front of front chimney. Install new counter flashing into rear wall and chimney flashing(grind/tuck lip in mortar joints in bricks, and seal). Install factory ridge cap metal. Install new valley metal as needed on rear. Install a new soil pipe flashing. Clean up and haul away all job related debris. *Contract includes minor wood replacement on rear shed roof (up to 3 sheets of plywood or 30 ft of 1X) 15 Year Warranty on all workmanship."Price: $4350.00The box gutters will be an additional $1800.

The other thing the City of CVG wants your contractors to do is to sign a six page contract outlining the scope of the work, the bid, payments, a statement of liability insurance, saying they won't eat the lead paint chips, and won't break the law. You have to have that signed if you want Rehab funds from CVG. It's a good thing to look over, even if you're not working with the City. It's a decent back-up contract. Take a look for yourself here. (Adobe PDF Reader Required.)

Anyway, we're making progress, which is what this thing is all about.

Bouncy floors

OK, so the third floor is as solid as a rock. The FIRST floor is also solid and sturdy. So what the hell happened to the second floor? Did the builders just get lazy?

This is an image of the joists under the third floor, the stable one. The floor I'm standing on to take the picture bounces as I walk across it, enough to make a Yankee seasick.

And of course, I have the 'heights' thing, so I'm constantly thinking I'm going to fall through and kill myself, at which point I know my husband will immediately make plans for building a large, (nay, massive) brick and stone outside grill monstrosity at the rear of the house, and I just can't have that, now can I?

So we need to stabilize the second floor. All of the original criss-cross joist braces in the picture above, are oddly missing on the underside of the second floor. I think we'll just add in 2x8" blocking, staggered by 8-10", and then, since we're not planning on having wood floors on the second floor, we'll just overlay the whole floor with 3/4" plywood or OSB and screw it to the subfloor.

Update: We just bought a 90 degree drill attachment for the cordless drill to fit in between the roof joists, a 3/8" drill bit and a lot of 3/8" bolts to attach 2x8's to the sides of the joists for reinforcing (called "sistering"). The drill bit seems to work well in cutting through the joists, a lot easier than I was expecting, actually. I've heard stories about the old joists being close to petrified wood and going through a lot of drill bits.

The only thing I wish was that we had taller ladders. Those joists are way up there and a tricky balancing act on two ladders holding up a 2x8. Something you may want to consider.

Almost completed the demolition.

Just a month late, $550 over budget and getting ready for the next step. In the image above, that's actually dumpster #2. It's smaller than the first one. There are more piles of wood and lathe in the back. There was a LOT of rubbish to come out of this house, a lot more than I expected.

The good news is that the walls and the floors are just incredibly level and plumb. The maximum tilt to a wall is on the first floor, and it's off by 1/4". Geeze what ever shall we do? Heh heh.

The carpeting is up on the first floor and we got our first real look at the original wood floors underneath. They look to be in very good shape, minus about 400 nail holes per room. We spent the last day bending over with hammer, crowbar & pliers trying to pull them all out. We know that we plan on sanding the floors down and trying to repair as much as we can (some small holes drilled for conduit, etc.) and that a single nail can ruin a disc sander's sandpaper wheels and at $5 bucks a pop, that's $20 per nail you missed. I think it's worth it to find them and pull them out.

Unfortunately, in the dust, they're almost invisible. I have to swipe my feet from side to side over a patch of flooring, going all the way down the side of a wall, then turn around and sweep back about 2' over, eventually covering the entire floor. When my shoe snags, it's time to bend over and look for the little bugger.

btw: We're not using a drum sander-- it's too hard and too potentially damaging to the floors. We'll be using the 4-rotary sander discs. We saw it on "Ask This Old House."

Here's my fav shot for the day:


In this shot, looking from a hole in the third floor (the dark area is the joist under the third floor), you can see the hole in the second floor at the gas line that goes through to the first floor. Ah, the view..... But again, the floors are in good shape. Just a lot of lead paint to get scraped up. We're still trying to determine the best way to get the lead paint up, chemical paint removal, which keeps the toxic lead dust down to a null amount, -- or sanding, which scatters the cr@p everywhere, requires full tyvex suits and lead rated dust masks (i.e. respirators), but may be easier.

We'll let you know how it goes. I think there's a coin toss in my future.

Prophylaxis

...any medical procedure whose purpose is to prevent, rather than treat or cure, disease.



Today, we visited my old friend Dr. Tony Brown ( www.doctortonybrown.com ) for a little prophylactic treatment.

No, not that that type!

It is generally recommended that if you're going to be working on a rehab that you get a tetanus shot. It's almost assured that there's going to be a rusty nail injury somewhere along the way. If this were to happen on a weekend, then we might be dealing with an ER tetanus shot.

Why worry about that? For the price of a couple bottles of wine, we can update our tetanus protection and deal with most minor injuries in our own time or simply on our own.

This was a tip I got from the Newell Brother's book on rehabbing brick buildings. I'd say it's a pretty good one.

Besides, we don't want to end up like John Roebling, do we?

To hell with Santa-- IKEA is coming to town!!!!

Woot!! Hello kitchen cabinets.....

March 12 is being circled on the calendars of IKEA shoppers as the Swedish company, specializing in contemporary home interiors, announces the opening of the 344,000-square-foot West Chester, Ohio store.

The West Chester store will stock 10,000 exclusively-designed items, 48 room settings, three model home interiors, a supervised children’s play area, and a 350-seat restaurant serving Swedish specialties such as meatballs with lingonberries or salmon plates and American food. Family-friendly features include a ‘Children’s IKEA’area in the showroom, baby care rooms, preferred parking and play areas in the store.

If you are going to use anchor screws (Tapcons)...

You need to contact Concrete Fastening Systems. Period.

Home Depot carries Tapcons (the alternative to using a Ramset to attach 2x4s to concrete, brick or masonry) but at a cost of $.20-$.25 cents each, and in two different stores I went to, they only sold them in boxes of 75, and they didn't have them in the length we need for our project.

In general, you add the depth of materials you are fastening to your concrete/brick/masonry and add 1" for penetration into the surface. (We, by the way, will be going overboard and also caulking the 2x4 furring boards to the surface before drilling for the Tapcons.) In our case, we have .5" of plaster and 1.5" of lumber to attach to our brick exterior walls. This means we'll be using a minimum 3" Tapcon. We found them in 3 1/4". We chose the 3/16" flathead screws so we wouldn't have to worry about the hex caps messing with the drywall we'll be laying over top.

We'll need about 500 of them to furr out all of the exterior walls at 2' intervals and prepare them for the closed cell spray insulation (more on that later). If we bought them at Home Depot we'd be looking at $110, and then we'd have to buy the drill bits ( you need to pre-drill the holes before using your hammer drill to insert the Tapcons) at about $2.50 each (replacing them about every 100 holes drilled.)

So why go to Concrete Fastening Systems (in Cleveland, OH) or online at www.confast.com? Because my 3/16" x 3-1/4" Flat phillips head Tapcons cost me only TEN CENTS EACH. And here's the kicker: I ordered them on Tuesday. They arrived Wednesday afternoon. Shipping was about $11.

And there was a bright and shiny new drill bit in each and every box, Free. Fast and cheap. Gotta love 'em.

So spread the word... Our demolition contractor said he used a Ramset because Tapcons were too expensive. Heh. Not any more.

Kitchen Island Rubbish Bin Idea

Thought for the day: Multiply everything by three. Time, cost, & supplies. When you're done, return the excess supplies back to the store or sell it on Ebay. (Better to have supplies on hand than to lose time buying more.)

Okay, after a quick look at the kitchen (the main focus of our home) we noticed that with the second sink in the island, we were still going to have problems if the sink wasn't big enough to hold a colander or deep enough to fill a pot with water... hence a bigger island sink is needed.

Also, since the butcher block counter top will be actively used for chopping, what I wanted was a quick receptacle for chop-scraps. We do a lot of chopping and trimming, so the idea is to have a small place to quickly clear the cutting board. At first, we thought we'd want to have a regular garbage can under the butcher block, but raw food cuttings are usually something you don't want to stick around until the garbage gets full. It would most definitely start to smell badly. So, we decided, a small receptacle that could be emptied to the larger garbage can on a daily basis would be best.

We recently ran by the old industrial kitchen standard steam pans (see here) and thought that would make an excellent short term rubbish bin. With slide clips to the underside of the butcher block, we can slide it in and out, keeping it tight against the underside of the block.

But how to access the bin from above the counter? Well, we'll obviously have to cut through the block and make a hole. But what do we use to cover the hole when it's not in use, how to we keep the opening clean, and how do we not knock things over when sliding them across the opening towards the sink? (Insert theme song to final Jeopardy question here.)

We'll cut the block out as a keystone. Angle the cut block into a wedge so that to open it, all we'll need to do is reach under the block and push it upwards and pop it out. That way it will be smooth when inserted into the block because it won't have a knob or a lever on the top & won't have a lip to hold gunk. Viola. We'll need to make a backup in case we lose one, but I think it'll work. I'll let you know. Better ideas are welcomed!!



Where is the house at now? We're finishing up the demolition work and we're on to our second dumpster. Most of the non-structural walls are down, trim boards are off, ceilings and drywall are gone. Once the old stacks are taken down and the leftover debris removed, we'll be on to the framing and *furring* out of the walls. It sounds cuter that it seems, trust me.