When a city ordinance is not your friend

See all those wires? That's the good old knob and tube that's been the bane of my existence for quite some time now.

We knew it was there when we bought the house, but most of the modern major appliances had been put on newer circuits and the wires were 12# quality copper. Most importantly, estimates ranging from $9-14k for a total rewire made us that much more fond of those old wires.

One of the biggest factors in the high cost was the fact that interior side of the exterior walls are all concrete/mortar with sheetrock on top of that. The time and cost of mortar bits to bring all the outlets from the floor and into the wall added a lot to the cost. Not to mention the local ordinances that go so far above and beyond national code...

So we decided to upgrade the old fuse box and the service (from 100 to 200 amp) and add 2 new circuits for CH/A and be done. We'll get to the rewire when we have a little more money. And here's where all the trouble began.

Our local ordinances state that if you alter more than 50% of the wiring of a house, you are then obligated to bring the rest of the house up to code. It also says that the box and circuits for CH/A constitute 50%. I'm not sure how they justify that, considering it is neither 50% of the materials, the labor, nor the cost...But when the inspector came out, he saw that we had also taken all the plaster off of the walls of the kitchen. Plaster was crumbling off, the holes were patched with sheetrock-- it needed to come down. He decided that this was a kitchen remodel and with the exposed wires, it would have to be brought up to code...therefore exceeding the 50% rule, therefore requiring a full rewire.

The electrician tried to get us out of it by rerouting unnecessary circuits and we took our case to the board of appeals, but no such luck. So this afternoon we meet with the electrician to get our homework assignments: anything we can do to the house that will make his life easier, the job quicker, and in turn cost less money.

I imagine our weekend will largely be spent on this. Guess the porch rescreening will have to wait.

Floors part 2

I will be in very much trouble when I get home if all I've talked about is the floor grates...With enough searching, I imagine we can find what we need.

A bigger item on the floor agenda, however, is the finish.

We love the way the shellac looks-- the orangey aged color. And we really love the way the colors are inconsistent. In some places it's streaked honey gold, and it's a deep red mahogany in others. It depends on the grain and the resin and it's soooo nice.

So we're a little afraid to stain it and are thinking of going with Waterlox or pure tung oil. But I don't think this is going to be as dark as we like. It's a tough decision. Stain may, unfortunately, even out the color...Other finishes that "yellow" may take longer than we want, or not be as durable as we'd like (like shellac for example)...The oil keeps the uneven tones, but results are a little lighter than we want. The Sherwin Williams guy was very nice, but of no help whatsoever. I guess we'll be trying a few products in some inconspicuous spots to see which works better...closets oughta be good for that! Just one more little weekend project to add to the list while the electrician works through the rewire.

Our very first project

and I mean VERY first. I left the closing and stopped at the store for a box cutter so I could tear straight into the carpet. First couple of days were spent pulling up the nasty, nasty 20-year old berber carpet and pad. And the pleasant surprise was floors in great shape and with a pretty shellac orange patina. Another couple of days pulling up tackboard and staples and nails. Then our short attention spans moved on to other projects...

Well, now we're back to the floors (kitchen floors are another problem altogether). They're antique heart pine. No knots, or swirly grain. It's very clear and very vertical. And very pretty.

Our first order of business was to price a professional. The main man in town for this is old and cranky. And he'll only patch the floors if he's going to do the whole job start to finish. Including the kitchen it was going to be around $4k. A little outside our budget.

So, Plan B. We have 2 floor furnaces (that are now moot because we've installed CH/A) which are about 2'X3' and 18"X32". And there's a couple of places where they patched with short boards face nailed in a row. I started emailing every supplier of heart wood I could find, gathered quotes. And moved on to another project, again.

Last weekend we tried to measure the area we need to patch and plan out how we would stagger the boards. And that's where I completely broke down. I have visions of big ugly, obvious patch job in the middle of the living room floor. And I can't stand it.

So now we're on the hunt for old registers/grates/grilles that we can put over the old floor furnace space. The grates we have are modern and ugly. And if I'm just gonna leave a hole there, I'd like it to at least be an antique/reproduction pretty hole.

Unfortunately, those are some big holes to fill and we're not having much luck finding anything. Lots of eBay time being put in. Not many architectural salvage places nearby. Anyone out there have a lead for us?

The beginning.

I never thought I'd move back to my hometown, but after I realized that I could get a house less than an hour away from my job for half the cost of a house 20 minutes from work, I decided it wasn't such a bad place. So I started the grueling task of house hunting with my partner. After a lot of internet searching and a couple of days out on the town with our realtor, he and I took the dog for a walk while we discussed our options. We were resigning ourselves to the best of the bunch we had seen so far. Not a house we were thrilled with, but it had most of what we were looking for.

Then we turned a corner and saw our realtor standing on the porch of this house. It was serendipity. It had a notice in the window that it had been foreclosed on and our search was immediately over. It was the neighborhood I'd wanted to live in my whole life. It was walking distance to my mother's. It had sidewalks for my partner's daughter to ride her bike on. It had kids. It had my favorite Chinese restaurant and a 24 hour drug store and a grocery and an antique dealer. It was simply the best location we could ask for. At the best price we had seen so far.

And once we were actually able to get in to see the house, it was exactly what we wanted. We both love older homes. I grew up in a 1920s home with a pantry and creaky floor boards. And since then I've lived in 40s and 50s houses that are great, but they're mostly little cracker boxes.

This was no cracker box. It had casement windows, and a gas log fireplace, a mud room, a window seat and a bathroom that had been redone in the fifties in pink tile. Hardwood (somewhere under the carpet), big porch with a screened in area and a red brick patio.

However, it also had 1920s knob and tube wiring, floor furnaces and window units, some roof problems and some bad patch jobs in the floor (our first indication of the termites). And the godawful ugliest kitchen (fruit-themed sheet-vinyl faux tile backsplash, anyone?) And that's just what we could see on first inspection.

But we bid and we got it. And we love it. And some days we are in over our heads completely. We spend hours online trying to figure out one problem or another, turning ourselves into plumbers and sheetrock hangers and floor refinishers. And someday we'll actually get to move in.

Shoulda started from the beginning...

Well, this blog is something I've been meaning to do for a while now-- I really should have begun posting the day we closed on the house. That's the day we literally started tearing into things-- pulling up carpet, taking off trim, prying faux wood siding from crumbling plaster. But we've been so caught up in all these many projects (not to mention a fight or two with the city) that this just went on the backburner. Now we've hit maximum frustration. Time to slow it down and take at look at what we've done so far, share some of the solutions to our roadblocks and beg for insight into the ones we haven't had the heart to tackle yet.

So I suppose the best place to start is with some of the before pictures and the story behind our little love affair with our little brick bungalow.