Builders Share

How Far Do You Go

Renovating an old house is often an exercise in figuring out when to stop.  Before starting a renovation you need to have some idea of the results you want but you also have to accept that the best laid plans of renovators often go awry.  Nothing has gone truly awry lately but every small project in this renovation seems to offer a case in point.

In setting out to re-side the south wall of the ell, I didn't expect to get into foundation work but once I had all the old siding off and was considering my next step, I realized that the time to take care of another back-burner task was now.  The rule of not starting one task without completing another doesn't really help if by starting one task you've provided an opportunity to take care of another.  They're all just one big task after all.

The foundation under the ell is made of two courses of 2x8 pressure-treated timbers that rest on top of loosely piled field stones.  The pressure treated timbers replaced 3x8 hemlock timbers that had rotted over the 100 or so years since the ell was built.  Back when I replaced the foundation timbers, I would have liked to replace the field stones with something more modern but time and money prevented it.  I was confident that the field stones had served their purpose for a long time and would probably continue to do so. 

To help reduce air infiltration through the field stones and into the crawl space under the ell I placed a vapor-barrier on the ground and had foam insulation sprayed along the foundation wall.  The foam created a seal between the vapor barrier and the interior floor.

On the exterior, the pressure-treated timbers and the field stones are exposed.  This was fine except that the grade of the soil was only an inch or less below the wood.  If I wanted those timbers to last a long time, it was important to keep soil and moisture away from them, and before I started residing the wall, I knew I should address the issue.

I put my carpenter's belt aside and grabbed a shovel.  I dug a trench about a foot and half wide and four inches deep.  Then I filled it with small stones from the pile I discovered a week or so ago.  This was a quick and dirty method for keeping moisture away from the foundation timbers.

Now I could have gone even further to improve the foundation by mixing up some mortar to fill in between the field stones but that would take me further afield from my original task of re-siding the wall.  I would have to turn back to carpentry and off the side road of excavation and stonework.

Outside Looking In

One of the lessons that renovators often speak to is not starting a new task without finishing the one you're working on.  I've found this to be good advice but have trouble following it.

In a perfect world I could finish working on the bidet project and then move on to the bedroom trim as planned.  But in that perfect world the doors I sent away to be stripped would have come back,and the trim job would be finished before the weekend that my wife and son planned to go out of town arrived so that they were absent while I took care of some nasty demolition work.  For that matter, in a perfect world there wouldn't be any nasty demolition work to take care of and I would be enjoying spring afternoons sipping margaritas on the side porch.

The south side exterior of the house has been an eyesore for a while.  Since installing a large double window over two years ago, the wall remained in disrepair as I concentrated on making the interior space livable.  Of course the wall kept out the elements, but was a constant reminder of an unfinished project.

This past week I took my first stride towards beautifying the main entrance to our humble abode.  The first task was removing the remaining cement-asbestos shingles/tiles that grace(?) the sides.

The ell section of the house was originally sided with cedar shakes and those shakes lay under the asbestos shingles.  My plan is to leave the asbestos shingles on the main part of the house for the foreseeable future but remove them from the ell and re-shingle that part with cedar.

Cement-asbestos siding, although fallen out of favor aesthetically, is nonetheless a decent siding material.  It's strong, fireproof, and has good insulating characteristics.  It's safe if left alone but if you start breaking up the tiles, you can release the harmful asbestos particles into the air and risk breathing them in.  The most dangerous aspect of cement-asbestos shingles were in their manufacture.  The workers who fabricated these tiles were exposed to harmful levels of asbestos.  In fact the company, Johns-Manville, that manufactured the shingles that are on my house was forced to file chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982 as a result of class-action suits brought on by the health affects of their manufacturing process.

I thought it best to take on the job of removing the tiles when my wife and son were away.  For my own safety I donned a tyvek suit and respirator while handling the stuff.

Once the asbestos was off and safely wrapped up in 6mil plastic packages for later disposal, I got to tearing off the old cedar shingles.

On home renovation shows, the demolition stage of a project is often portrayed as fun.  "Here's a sledgehammer George, have a ball."  For me, aside from the hard work involved, I find it depressing.  After all, I'm tearing apart something that someone else spent time, energy, and money on building.  I like old good things and having to destroy them brings me no pleasure.  I'm also keenly aware of the time, energy, and money it's going to take to rebuild.

I suspect that as we learn more about the finite aspect of the earth's resources we'll look back on some of those gleeful demolition party scenes with a bit of shame.  I would like to have been able to recycle the old cedar shakes by burning them come wintertime but they were covered with vestiges of paint (probably lead-based).  Into the landfill they go.

Out In the Yard

Spring here in New Hampshire comes at the last minute but it comes on strong. The weather turns nice and before you have time to get the wood stacked and the yard cleaned up, the grass is 6 inches high and needs mowing, not to mention trying to get a jump on the weeds.

But back to wood.

When I gutted the inside of the house at the beginning of this project, I made a point of separating out all the unpainted wood debris with the intention of using it later for fuel.  In a 19th century house, the amount of unpainted wood in the walls is impressive.  Of course most of it remains in the house, making up the timber frame and the exterior sheathing, but the lathe that held the plaster was all removed along with the framing that made up a few interior walls which were demolished as part of reconfiguring the floor plan.

All this scrap wood went into a big pile out behind the barn, and over the past 3 years I've slowly chipped away at the pile, cutting up the longer pieces as needed and using the lathe for kindling.  But the pile was enormous.  It loomed in the backyard as unfinished business.  This week I finally made some inroads at taming the beast.

I started cutting it and stacking it on a pallet and then decided that I had enough scraps to build a little shed to keep it dry.  This of course prolonged the task of getting rid of the ugly pile but come next winter I'll be happy for having dry kindling.

Now this is one shabby little woodshed but remember it was hacked together in a few hours with nothing but recycled scrap wood and leftover roofing materials.  I've spent so much money over the past few years on building supplies; I thoroughly enjoyed this little recycling project.

...and what about the tulips?

Remember back in November when I did a shotgun bulb planting post?  Well, the results are in and I'm in the pink.

Leak Speak

I had just solved the problem of a frozen faucet valve by soaking the valve parts in a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water.  My bargain bidet was going to work out OK after all.  There was just one more thing to fix and this project of installing a bidet would be complete.

When I did the rough plumbing for the fixture some time back, I didn't pay close attention to which side I ran the hot and cold supply lines.  I do remember struggling a bit working in the tight space where the supply lines needed to run, so I probably had my eye more on running the 1/2" copper pipe as directly as possible.  At any rate, the pipes came up through the floor with the cold water on the left and the hot water on the right. It wasn't until I hooked the bidet up that I discovered this mistake.

I could have left it with the hot and cold reversed, but that would mean joining the world of reverse plumbing whenever entering the bidet closet, and who knows what other implications that would have. I decided I should do the job right, so I picked up a pair of flexible supply connectors at the hardware store and then proceeded to change out the ones I had just recently installed with the longer flexible ones that allowed me to cross the lines between the 1/2" copper and the faucet valve.

Then another setback.

I'm not sure how it happened, but in the course of changing out the supply connectors, the hot water shut off valve developed a leak.  It's possible that I had over-tightened the compression nut for the connector and this cracked the valve, but whatever the cause, the leak meant I would now have to replace the shut-off valve too.

The shut-off valve was soldered in place so I had to break out the propane torch again, heat up the solder joint and remove the valve.  The hardware store only had compression style fittings for the replacement and that was fine with me.  Once I cleaned up the 1/2" hot water supply line, installing the compression fitting was easy. 

Now with the valve replaced and the connector lines crossed to bring hot water to the left faucet valve and the cold water to the right,  we were ready to try out the bidet.

Plumbing go-round

Sometimes it feels as if I'm doing one renovation project inside of another, kind of like a set of Russian Dolls.  The house is being renovated and many of the parts that are going towards the renovation need renovation themselves.

I described the rehab of an old sewing cabinet into a sink vanity so that I could make use of a salvaged sink.  Now I'm in the midst of resurrecting a salvaged bidet.

Bidets are just uncommon enough that they fetch a pretty high price here in the U.S.  Anybody who wants this special toilet fixture must be willing to pay about double the price of a standard toilet.  I was lucky enough to come across one at a salvage dealer a couple of years ago for $50 and snapped it up.

My bargain bidet sat collecting dust in the barn for a while, and then it sat unplumbed in the little closet that would be its home for even longer until last week when I was finally able to devote attention to this minor plumbing project.

The first step to connecting the bidet to the rough plumbing was to solder (or 'sweat') shut off valves to the supply lines.  This required turning off the main water supply and prepping the 1/2" copper using plumber's cloth and solder paste.  Then, after placing the valves, I could heat the pipe using a Bernzomatic torch and apply the solder so that it flowed around the joint, quickly wiping the excess off with a damp rag.

With the  shut off valves in place, I was ready to put the bidet in place by fitting the waste tail piece into the drain trap.  Once the fixture was in place and the waste connection made, I installed the supply lines.  These attach to the faucet and the shut off valves by compression fitting.

Now that all my connections were made, I turned on the main water supply and searched for leaks.  Sure that I didn't have a leak, I opened the valves to try out the faucet.

Two things became immediately apparent: (1) the supply lines were crossed so that hot water was coming from the cold tap, and (2) the hot water tap valve was stuck.

As far as the crossed supply lines, this was something that I hadn't paid close enough attention to when doing the rough plumbing two years prior.  It was no big deal really because with flexible supply lines between the shut-off valve and the taps, I could re-cross them.  Unfortunately, I had used short rigid supply connectors so I would have to buy some new ones.

The problem with the frozen hot water valve was another story. My first instinct was to use brute force to try and free up the valve.  This didn't work.  I then decided that buying a salvaged bidet was a mistake and I should just take a sledge hammer to it.  Before doing that, however, I thought it might be more reasonable to try to find a replacement valve.

A visit to the manufacturer's web site (Kohler) gave me the hint of soaking the valve in a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water.  This dissolved the calcium deposits that had encrusted the valve and freed it up.  (And without spending a dime!)  Now I was sorry I had resorted to brute force originally because the threads that hold the knob to the valve got stripped a little when I took a wrench to it.  Luckily the threads weren't stripped beyond use.

Next:  Reconnecting the supply lines introduces a leak...