102yr old house partial remodel

[Vg3200p]

Just a thread about the partial remodel of our 102yr old house. We're trying to keep as much original as we can but some things just need fixed. Pics are of upstairs bathroom so far.( forgot before pics.) And how I'm tarring the shingle roof to try to squeeze a few more years out of it so we can save up to have a metal one installed. This week will be ripping up kitchen wall so I xan start to run plumbing from basement to bathroom. Think the best thing I've done so far has been to add over 850lbs of insulation in attic. Seems to have made a big difference already

 

[ispinwool]

Looks like you're off to a great start. I love the wood ceiling! Old homes are lovely, aren't they❤️
Our home was built in 1845 and was in horrible shape when we bought it... You're right--some things
"just need fixed" and sometimes it's more sensible to fix with modern materials. (ex: Our wooden windows
were rotted/broken so they were replaced with vinyl double paned.) The current building material prices are horrific though...well, most everything is horribly expensive--or maybe I'm just old enough to remember lower prices! LOL
Keep us posted on your progress...it's always fun to see a Grand Ol' Lady get a facelift.

 

[Vg3200p]

Looks like you're off to a great start. I love the wood ceiling! Old homes are lovely, aren't they❤️
Our home was built in 1845 and was in horrible shape when we bought it... You're right--some things
"just need fixed" and sometimes it's more sensible to fix with modern materials. (ex: Our wooden windows
were rotted/broken so they were replaced with vinyl double paned.) The current building material prices are horrific though...well, most everything is horribly expensive--or maybe I'm just old enough to remember lower prices! LOL
Keep us posted on your progress...it's always fun to see a Grand Ol' Lady get a facelift.
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Your house looks very nice and sturdy. Is the first floor solid block construction with the second floor brick?

 

[ispinwool]

@Wisdomoak159#19
The upper part is brick (inside and out) and the first floor is hewn fieldstone.
The first house built in the area (which was labeled a 'Mansion") burned down and the guy that built our house salvaged the stone. Then dug out clay from the creek across the street to make the brick.

 

[Vg3200p]

@Wisdomoak159#19
The upper part is brick (inside and out) and the first floor is hewn fieldstone.
The first house built in the area (which was labeled a 'Mansion") burned down and the guy that built our house salvaged the stone. Then dug out clay from the creek across the street to make the brick.

That's awesome piece of history

 

[vinny11950]

Just a thread about the partial remodel of our 102yr old house. We're trying to keep as much original as we can but some things just need fixed. Pics are of upstairs bathroom so far.( forgot before pics.) And how I'm tarring the shingle roof to try to squeeze a few more years out of it so we can save up to have a metal one installed. This week will be ripping up kitchen wall so I xan start to run plumbing from basement to bathroom. Think the best thing I've done so far has been to add over 850lbs of insulation in attic. Seems to have made a big difference already

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Wow, this is a big job. Thanks for sharing. I love pics of renovations. Good luck.

 

[Ashful]

Nice project! I assume the 1/2" piping is gas lighting, and the 1-1/4'ish is hydronic or steam heat? I spy one run of knob an tube. Nice to have a full gut to resolve, 90% of my reno work has been minimal access, cut and leave, while snaking new wire thru available chases.

Note that site-fired brick is as rare as hens teeth, in any house as new as 1920. Are you sure you're getting the right legend from a reliable source? If I had a dollar for every false "fact" someone gave me about one of my old houses (this one alone), I'd have enough to buy another house. I can't speak for Indiana, but in eastern PA it'd be nearly impossible to find any house with site-fired bricks built after the late 1700's, despite many incorrect claims to the contrary.

Please don't rip out and replace the windows, if there's any hope of rebuild/salvage! It just ruins an old house. Every window in my current house, with the exception of one of the few from 1734 which was replaced in 1775 to match the appearance of the rest on that wall, is original to the date it was installed, or rebuilt as such. It can be done!

How bad was the plaster? Never had a house in which I had to knock it all down, but I've used truckloads of plaster repair options, to re-affix and skim over plaster that's lost its keying. So much nicer than any drywall job, when it's done. There are still plasters around, if you can afford them, and get onto their schedule. They always seem to have a long wait list.

Old houses can be expensive to do right, but at least around here, you save a boatload on tax assessments. I've saved roughly $200k in property taxes in the last 12 years, versus some of my neighbors on similar acreage and square footage, maybe half of which could be labeled for higher upkeep costs.

 

[Vg3200p]

Ashful. The brick comment was in regards to ispinwools house. Mine is just crappy concrete block foundation. The wife won't let any of the windows be replaced. She loves her original windows and wood. The plaster wasn't bad. Bit I removed it all out of fear of water damage to studs from roof leaks. I think I have almost all knob and tube discone Ted by now. All the piping you see in floor is water piping. In this house the water is run in I'm assuming iron pipe. It will be replaced with copper. And pvc for the drains

 

[Ashful]

Cool! Yeah, I see I wandered with the brick thing, I wasn't keeping proper track of who said what.

If you find some good storms you're happy with, you won't regret repairing over replacing. Traditional old windows properly installed and maintain will last more than 100 years between rebuilds, in fact I think I might have two that are pushing 280 years in their original frames, and with a good storm window installed their radiant losses are actually lower than any modern window I've seen. They're some work, but they preserve the curb appeal, and they're so fun to look thru. Much of the glass in my second floor windows are so old and wavy that if I see something moving out in the lawn, I have to focus good and long to even tell if it's a person or deer! Of course, panes have been broken over the years, so you can usually find one that's easier to see clearly thru.

Speaking of which, I went thru some old photos to find a few to hopefully inspire the salvage of your own. Here's a "new" window installed 1775, under a lintel that may be original to this 1734'ish portion of the house:



Here's me building a new frame to replace one that was rotten on our 2nd floor:



Here are some FLIR images showing difference in storm vs. no storm window, on these old windows. One window on each wall of the 2nd floor is missing it's storm... guess which two?



If you have floor opened up, might as well remove the old pipe and use the same holes to route new, where possible. I always left old knob and tube hardware for owners of the distant future to find and enjoy, but would cut and cap or even remove the wiring, where possible. I would definitely never leave any knob and tube live, no matter the condition. They didn't even have standardized sizing for breakers, back when much of that work was done.

Did your street have electric when that house was built? I guess it's likely by 1920, if you were in or near a town. My mind went to gas lighting, because the last house I renovated was an 1877 Victorian lit by gas. The village it was in was plumbed for gas likely 40 years before it ever had electric. Here's a photo of that one, taken around 1895, IIRC.

 

[Vg3200p]

Wow your history in your house was cool! Awesome that it's older than our country. Your carpentry skills are far beyond mine. I'm more of a framer not a finisher if you know what I mean. I have left alot of the knob and tube attached to studs but disconnected from power. I would assume the electric was here in 1920 but I don't know. I do plan to run the new plumbing in the old knotches in the joists. The history ive found so far was tgat this lot was part of the mill for the town. Our town is small and we are on the very west end of it. It was founded in 1837.Did find a hand(church fan) behind the walls old enough that the phone numbers were numbers like 24 or 63. Some of our windows are large and have quite the ripple effect as well.

 

[Vg3200p]

Also 2 windows in an upstairs room were replaced at somepoint in tge past. As was a bay window in the kitchen. Most of the originals do have a storm window installed already. My guess would be this work was done in the 1990s but that's just a guess

 

[Vg3200p]

The fan from inside the wall

 

[ispinwool]

@Ashful ya, I'm not a fan of the vinyl windows either...I would have definitely preferred to keep/repair the old wooden ones. But, at the time, we only had 30 days to get part of a condemned house livable for us and our kids (then ages 2, 4, 6). We lived in 2 rooms on the first floor as we fixed the rest of the house. There was no water, furnace, minimal electric, the roofing needed repaired and shingles replaced, each window had bb gun holes and rotted wood...etc...
We had to fix things as quickly as we could.

As for the bricks used in our house, that info came from our historical society. I tend to believe it because some of the brick is soft (probably wasn't fired properly).

One of the funny stories of the renovation is the day my parents showed up to see the house. My mom had
2 rolls of paper towels, a bottle of 409 cleaner and some shelf paper. We did tell them "it needed a lot of work" but they weren't prepared for holes in the roof, ceilings and floors, peeling wallpaper, broken windows and exposed wiring. There weren't any cupboards to use the shelf paper. They didn't stay very long. LOL
Then they called me that night: "If you want to leave him and bring the kids, we'll understand."
Bahahaha! (they honestly did like my hubby...they just thought he'd lost his mind!)
[p.s. That was 27 years ago...we're on anniversary #38 ]

 

[Ashful]

Hi I-Spin-Wool (now I know )

I didn't mean to criticize you for going vinyl, there are plenty of people forced to go this way due to constraints of either time or budget, no judgement there. If you can keep the originals, even stowed away in a shed for future re-installation, always better. But it's also not always practical.

Your house being built out in Butler County in 1845, depending on how far you are from a local town with a working refractory, seems more possible. Around here, close to Philadelphia, New Hope, and many other old towns, you won't find them that late. But farther it, it seems more likely. But do beware that most claims of site-fired bricks are eventually proven wrong, it is very rare.

Funny story, we had one house in our family, handed down from father to son from 1692 until 1995. It was built in three parts, as a log cabin in 1692, with a much larger brick addition in the early 1700's, followed by a stone addition in the early 1800's. When asking why half was brick and half was stone, the story passed down thru the family is that the generation who decided to build that large brick addition had to site-fire every brick, and quickly grew to regret this decision during construction, as it was way more work than they had ever anticipated. When it was time to expand again, with an addition that ended up fully encapsulating the original log home within this third section, they decided to use stone that had been piling up around the farm the prior 150 years. It's hard to imagine the sorting and effort that goes into building with field stone was easier than brick, it just gives you a sense of how much work site-firing must really be!

 

[ispinwool]

@Ashful
I wasn't feeling criticized...
We were in a hurry so we did what we had to.

1692 is an amazing home! If those walls could talk!

And now you've got me really curious...I'm doing a bit of research to see if there
was a brick factory in town/close by at that time....just because the historical society says it, doesn't mean
it's gospel truth.

Your building with stone story: Last summer my daughter and I drove a few hours South-East to Fort Loudoun...the stone homes out that way are spectacular! There are a few here in our county but not
many. Truly a talent that needs to be passed down/ kept alive.

 

[mikey]

I live in a house built around 1765, keep in mind that the materials were of a better quality than what you can find today, a 2x4 was 2x4 save as much as you can, history counts.

 

[Ashful]

I live in a house built around 1765, keep in mind that the materials were of a better quality than what you can find today, a 2x4 was 2x4 save as much as you can, history counts.

Nice! Any pre-Revolutionary house is something special. Speaking of materials, several of my floor joists are walnut! The price on a 30 foot 6 x 10 inch walnut timber today would make your head spin, if you could even buy such a thing, but back then they were probably just the most convenient material found on-site. My yard is still mostly walnut trees today.

Our stone is a mix of red shale and granite. The shale delaminates a bit over time, but granite is forever. Our bedding mortar is the most fragile part of the construction, as it's just sand and clay dug out of the back yard. Portland cement had not yet been invented, and lime had to be delivered from distant kilns by ox cart, so shipping costs were prohibitive to use it for vast quantities of bedding mortar. Lime mortar was used for stucco and pointing, only.

Getting back to windows, I just discovered today that I have yet another issue with the wooden storms I've installed on most of my 2nd floor. You've probably heard that you need a storm window to be more leaky than the double hung it's guarding, which is one of the (very few) good arguments for interior storm windows. Well, I guess I did too good a job in building and fitting my storms, as moisture has been condensing on their inside face. I wasn't too worried, I made them from mahogany which won't rot anytime soon, but I just realized the trapped moisture has been doing some damage to my doug fir window frames. Between that and a few other issues, I think I'm going to end up switching all of my storms back to good old 1950's triple-track technology.

 

[Vg3200p]

Ashfull sorry to hear you have to redo your windows again. I'm really enjoying hearing about all these old houses! Finished sealing all the problem spots on the roof i think. Finally got ceiling finished today(been busy with other things after work last couple days). It came out ok. Used standard grade pine from menards so alit of defects in the wood. There was also some uneven original framing that affected how it sits in places. I'm really starting to question some of the framing techniques done in this house. But it adds character.

 

[Ashful]

Nice work!

Is the house balloon framed? Can't remember when that was outlawed, but if it is, you'll want to install fire stops while you've got things open. Google is your friend there, just use the key words "balloon framed fire".

 

[Vg3200p]

Nice work!

Is the house balloon framed? Can't remember when that was outlawed, but if it is, you'll want to install fire stops while you've got things open. Google is your friend there, just use the key words "balloon framed fire".

I'll have to Google balloon frame as i don't know what that is. The weird thing about the framing of this house is. The right(looking in) wall is shared with the stairwell to the attic. Which you access from a door in a bedroom. Well I'm assuming the ceiling joists are load bearing here. (This wall is the main center wall on the 1st floor) But they are cut about a foot short. And then scabbed together to reach that right side wall. Not flush either. At the same time that wall supports the stairwell to the attic whose other wall is suspended with no support. It's a very odd setup. And I don't really trust it. The picture is from the first floor looking up to the bottom of the room that the attic stairs are attached to

 

[Vg3200p]

That is why I am sheathing thewhole room in 1/2" osb. I wanted to add some structural stability up there

 

[Ashful]

Hard to tell much from the photo, I may be misinterpreting the view angle or something. So the joists were short, or cut by some prior owner, and then extensions scabbed (back?) on? If so, sister-in-law each joist with a new 2x6 or whatever max height will fit alongside, might be a good solution to put strength back where it should be, and also get the benefit if a newly-leveled floor or ceiling.

 

[Ashful]

Lol… just noticed iPhone auto-filled “sister in” to “sister-in-law”, and time to edit has expired. Oh well. 😀

 

[Vg3200p]

I probably should've done that. But no way am I pulling the ceiling and new insulation back out now. I'd doesn't worry me enough for another 10hrs of labor lol

 

[mikey]

Any storm window needs a slight gap to prevent condensatio.