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!