Demolition Man

What was up... Must come down.
In order to get going on the project, the first step was clearly to do some demolition work. There were bits of plaster that were coming down from the ceiling, and damage around the windows on either side of the room. First, a study of those windows. Mike identified the need to fix up these windows and generously volunteered to do this repair. The photo on the left is during demolition phase, which included removing loose plaster, and removing the old counterweights from the original windows. Closing up these voids and sealing up around the windows would help with air infiltration when all was buttoned up, and this falls in the category of "doing things the right way." In order to not give Mike nearly enough credit for his careful work, I've quickly posted another photo with the work completed that will seem like it took no time at all. He meticulously repaired and patched this and I'm sure it will last for generations! The photo on the right shows it all closed up and finished. He was even careful enough to get a nice surface finish, despite the 11" or so of wall we would build out from it, and 2 layers of insulation that would eventually cover it. If anyone ever has the bad taste to re-do our work, they'll be delighted by our forethought!

You will no doubt also notice the plaster missing from the ceiling area. This is what we in the hlogging business call a "segue." Mike got a start on the plaster removal one day while I was at work. He showed me his method for bringing down the plaster and lath underneath, making sure that I took careful note of the finer points. Once he was sure I was fully aware of the method, he informed me that this was to be my first big responsibility!

The process of bringing down plaster is deceptively simple. The original plan was to shove the slim end of a pry-bar under a tiny bit of plaster, and take tiny chunks of plaster in hand, then throw them into the bag before they could hit the floor and create lots of plaster dust. This plan was rubbish. The need to go back and pry off the lath underneath roughly doubled the work involved, so the improved plan was to start by pulling off lath, and pull the chunks of plaster down as they came (more easily this way than the previous anyway!)

With this new method, I began to make satisfying progress and cut through the work much quickly. It was extraordinarily messy work, and incredibly unpleasant. The main reason why this should be so laced with suffering is what was on the other side of the wood lath: about 115 years of coal dust. Sure, most of that was deposited there in the first 25 years or so, but the Industrial Revolution's vestiges made themselves known with each piece of ceiling I brought down. This put a fine black dust all over, well... my entire house. Fortunately, I had the realization how hilarious it would be to laugh at my misfortune. See if you can see why I might complain about this work from looking at the next photo. This picture is not quite in strict chronology, but it documented the last day that I suffered through coal dust. You can see the area where my safety glasses covered, as well as my respirator. It's important to note, of course, that I'm not wearing a black long-sleeve shirt for the photo. That was the end result of a night upstairs working on plaster removal. Basically - a pretty awful task. You can see how happy I was to know I was done with it.

Next Up...
I gloss over a bit more prep work (e.g. caulking windows and such), and we start talking about framing!

Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance!

Getting Things Started

Before jumping in with both feet, Mike and I decided to get plans together for the room. Lots of measurements were taken, and I took advantage of a being tired of my extraordinarily busy social life to put together plans of the existing shell. We used this as a basis to draw up ideas and sketch some layouts.

These were invaluable since we could print off as many of these as we wanted, and they were pre-dimensioned and to scale. We could also use this to draw in the different plans - electrical, plumbing, framing, electrical again, plumbing once more... and so on. I drew these up using Microsoft Visio, which was fairly easy to learn quickly, and is pre-loaded with lots of useful shapes including windows, plumbing fixtures, etc. That way, I could get layouts prototyped quickly on the computer, as well as print off the base image to draw on.



I've got one example of a very early proposed layout. At a certain point, of course, it was important to start building and see what shape the room wanted to take. This is a strange concept: the shape the room wants to take. I learned it from Mike, and was at first very dubious. The idea of the room telling me the next step to take really seemed foreign, but it was shocking how true it is - once a basic framework was up, it seemed very obvious how one idea or another was logical. I think of this as rapid prototyping - you can't decide whether or not a ceiling height feels low until you're standing under it, so these plans evolved rapidly as we started to build. So, for historical curiosity, check out an early idea I sketched out:



However, the one item that was key for planning was the plumbing for the bathroom. In the plans above, the shower was very much unworkable - it would have projected into the room a lot more than the drawing indicates. Similarly, the toilet was going to be in a strange place with some window visibility. We didn't realize much of this until after we started prototyping-building Taking some of these thoughts into account, Mike drew up proposed plumbing plans by hand that were more detailed and based on code. I know I have other and more close to current drawings, but these are the ones I have handy for now. When I get electronic copies of the other ones, I'll do a catch-up post to share them out.

Next Up!
The first photos of construction!

Design Help Needed!

Which of these lights is better for putting on either side of a bathroom vanity? Decor for the bathroom is fairly modern/simple... Comment and let me know!

Choice 1 - Black with Chrome Accents, Frosted Inner Glass, Clear outer



Choice 2 - Brushed Aluminum with White Shade

The Reason for the Treason

Now that my loyal and expansive readership is well-versed in the house's character, charm, and idiosyncrasies, it's time to kick off a series of posts detailing the first major project (lots of painting excluded).

Third Floor Beginnings
In December 2007, I started to consider the prospect of touching up the third floor and making it a bit more livable. A friend was considering moving in from out of town in a few months and was interested in a room to rent, and I was starting to think that I was wasting 1/3rd of my house. At the same time, my friend Mike was interested in working on a project like this, and had both expertise and talent. We agreed that he would be the project leader, and we would collaborate on the design and build that laid ahead. Before anyone could call it home, it would be necessary to remedy the arctic tundra that formed up there each winter. After herding the caribou and plowing the snowdrifts off the floor, some photos were taken.

Looking toward the front of the house, we have a reasonable size window obscured by a window air conditioner, the only climate control available on the floor. Take note of the angles of the ceiling/walls here - these presented lots of challenges over the course of the project. The plaster around this area was all in pretty great shape, and the woodwork was pretty good as well, although plenty dirty. Wires were all run on top of the baseboards with simple plastic covering over top. Lighting was plentiful and fluorescent.

Standing in the area of the above photograph and looking back and to the right shows a bit of a different story. The fencing surrounds the stairs to the second floor. Plaster is falling down on the back wall slope, and was patched with spray foam insulation installed by Elliott (best tenant ever). More wiring surface mounted in plastic channels. There's a fairly nice window at the top of the stairs, a tiny bit of natural light. The floors look pretty decent in this picture, and with a little work could look great. The green is the chimney, which previous owners/tenants painted. Yeah, it's strange... who knows?


I saved The Bathroom for last, since other than thermal insulation, it was most at fault for spurring on the renovation. The photo is taken from the same spot, looking now toward the back left of the room. Other than a distinct lack of privacy, or even completed walls, the key feature here is that everything is built up on a 2x6" riser, bringing a low ceiling even closer to the head of anyone who had to visit the loo. It's hard to believe that this is significantly worse than it looks in photos, but it was a constant risk of head injury to be in the bathroom area here. Once we started the delicate surgery to disassemble the room, the limits were further visible.

I couldn't quite find a photo that illustrated these limitations cleanly, but notice how each of the important fixtures (toilet, tub, and sink) were positioned exactly in the wrong places. The sink was in the back left corner, which meant that any attempt to lean in for a tooth-brushing required wearing a helmet. The toilet had excellent visibility into the neighbor's house, and vice versa. The bathtub wasn't quite as bad, but was set up to be a shower that was as head-threatening as the rest of the room. All in all, the most redeeming feature of this work was that someone other than me had hauled the lumber and plywood up to this point. This was all disassembled in short order.

To be fair to the previous laborers, the reason for elevating the bathroom was a valid one. The floor joists for this room run from one side of the house to the other exactly perpendicular to what's shown on this platform. This meant that they did not have the option of pulling up some of the floor and running plumbing below to get it back to the main plumbing stack. Their solution was laid bare when the plywood was taken off of the platform: both their supply lines and waste lines ran under here, as well as electrical feeds. We didn't know how we would accomplish this without raising things up, but we knew there had to be a way. Cleverness would be needed.

After disassembling the last vestiges of the bathroom, we knew the first order of business would be to put up framing to hold the insulation that would make the room livable, but in order to get started on that project, we would have to know a rough plan for the room, and attack any elements of the room that would get in our way.

Next up - planning a new space!

Move-In Condition?

The best part of buying this house originally was convincing friends and family that I had not, in fact, lost it completely. The house was a melange of strange design choices and unfinished projects. Retrospect being what it is, I wish I had more pictures of it before the changes I made. However, in my haste to get it to not make me break out in hives when I walked in the door, destruction and resurrection was swift and merciless. However, I would be remiss in starting a houseblog (hlog?) without paying tribute to the best features of the house as I purchased it.

Guest Room/Second Bedroom
By far the "party piece" of the whole house, and what stuck with me originally, was the kid's room at the top of the stairs to the second floor. Have a look in the door. Go ahead.

Not easily seen from this view is the midnight blue sky color painted on the ceiling. Nor can you see the roughly 75 pairs of wires sticking through the ceiling. This was to be a very cool starry-night-sky with twinkly lights. If it had been finished, I would have considered keeping it. However, it was unfinished, and had to go. The stars made of concrete and stuck to the wall and opalescent pink woodwork are merely icing on the cake, no?

The other gem is the behind-the-door blackboard paint. As much as I wanted to leave notes in Elliott's room that would mess with his head, this had to go as well. Notice also that the door to the bedroom is complete rubbish. It will be replaced eventually. It is much improved since these photos, thank goodness.

Nothing Says Welcoming Like a Purple Entry Hall

It's true. Licensed Scienticians and Researchers have conducted extensive tests and come to one conclusion: purple entry halls make people feel welcome. The best part of this room was that if you ran your hands down the wall on the right (with the large door to the living room), your hands would be purple. The drywall hadn't been properly primed, so the paint came off like chalk on your hands.

In the spirit of balance - how about that fan? It is totally a sexy fan, and is allowed to hang there to this day. Feel free to comment on the classy curtains in the next room - they will receive no dedicated criticism beyond this.

Dining Room: Kind of a Pain
This one caught me by surprise. Although originally deemed "inoffensive" and "workable" on my first walk-through of the house, this one ended up being a big motivator for change. Important to note here: the window trim is partially stripped. It would take nearly a week to complete that job, but they remain unfinished and thankfully covered by curtains.

The transom window was swinging freely, which went completely unnoticed by me on the first walkthrough. The hardware has arrived to solve this issue, and is awaiting installation. The other item I'd ask you to note here is the coloration of the walls. In a stroke of brilliance, they had thought ahead to paint them pea-soup green, allowing pea-soup based foodfights to proceed without regard for collateral damage to walls.

Actually, I didn't mind this color that much, but it made a dark room fairly darker, and was ripe for a repaint. The dining room light fixture also bears a passing mention - very under-scale and out of character with the house. It was replaced in short order. Lastly, note the Harry Potter nook for under-stairs storage. Haven't quite figured out the best way to "finish" that nook to make it less obvious. Very handy to have, but a bit unsightly.

All the Charm of a Prison Bathroom, At Home!
Another enigma: the powder room off of the dining room. In theory, a very cool bathroom space - under the stairs gives it an angled roof, and the walls were finished in a sort of concrete/stucco textured wall. The single 40W bulb with blue paper shade dangled dangerously low to illuminate the room enough for you to realize there was no way you'd be able to see anything.

Upside on this room? The floor. Those are a variety of glass pebbles as kind of a mosaic-floor. Feels fun on sock feet, and was definitely a keeper. The toilet is unremarkable, and looks like a toilet. This was obviously a big disappointment given the other eccentricities of the house, but was a nice relief on the budget.

And Now for the Main Event
The whole genesis for this blog is now my focus: the third floor. This is a really large space, covering the front 2/3rds of the house. It has interesting sloping ceiling/walls, and the highest ceiling points are a very livable 8' height. There was the roughed-in bathroom you see to the right, and plaster walls with hardwood floors. Although not quite polished enough to move into as a bedroom, it was a reasonable guest-housing space with a futon, and made a decent office space for Elliott.

However, when Summer came and it was clear that a window A/C would take up one of the three small windows up here, and then Winter showed us that fingerless gloves would be a good office Christmas present for Elliott, climate control up here became a priority. In addition, the sloping ceilings were barely compatible with this bathroom design. Everything is built up on a 2x6" riser to allow plumbing to run under this deck, and the bathtub was positioned under a slope that would give any bather serious bad posture. Use of the sink required nothing short of acrobatics and a neck brace. This space needed to be rethought and reconstructed.

So, as they say on Top Gear - "How hard can it be?" An attempt to answer that question is the first major project that I've done on my house. I plan to chronicle the project and its changes to the space until I catch up to where I am now, nearly 10.5 months into the project.

This is a long post
I'm legally obligated to say "stay tuned to my blog!" at this point, but sincerely hope you will, and welcome all criticisms and comments. Once I'm caught up, I'll plan to post design ideas for critique and sharing, photos in progress, thoughts on how to proceed, and so on.

Between all the house posts, I may include tales from my life, although these will usually be in the form of excuses for not meeting aggressive projections for how work would proceed!

Welcome to the Nightmare

With tongue firmly planted in cheek, I welcome you to the Nightmare on Maple Ave, a blog documenting the house I bought in 2006, and probably some personal life thrown in for good measure.

Alternative names under consideration:
Better Building by Bogart
Barely Built by Bogart
Irritating Alliterative Blogname

Suggestions welcome!