Swinging a Hammer Into the New Year

 Transitioning a second story kitchen into a bedroom is harder than you might imagine. Here's a shot of the cabinets mostly demolished. The uppers have already been moved to the garage to make storage space (imagine the white area on the wall as the "backsplash"). In this picture you can see a number of potentially deadly DIY projects:

The rest of the demo work reveals missing baseboard and miserable water  damage to the flooring.

W. M. Rutter- apparently a now defunct WV lumber  company.
Difficult to obtain 1 1/2 x 5/16 red oak strip flooring.

My pathetic first attempts at soldering copper pipes in the wall between the room and a closet. You can see that the first try didn't work (water sprayed on  lathe).  On a second try, I forgot to empty the active water line down to the valve in the basement and nearly lost an eye when steam in the pipe built up and shot off the end cap like a bullet!

Plaster patching finished (I was forced to cap the waste water line and leave it protruding slightly from the wall). It connects to an air vent directly on the other side of this wall in the corner of the closet. Since we didn't want to remove the whole thing, which would have also involved roof work, we settled for a small oddity. It will likely be behind a bed or some other piece of furniture anyway!

You can see the electrical outlet now moved to the baseboard just to the right of the ladder.

Well, it's still a work in progress. I was able to reuse baseboard from the kitchen in this room, except for one stretch. I also found trim work I had saved to match the existing wood around the closet door. I would not have been able to match it otherwise, short of custom millwork (hah!). What remains? SERIOUS flooring work (2 inch x 5/16 straight edge is on order- I will have to rip each piece), then refinishing the entire floor and lots of painting. Stay tuned!

Roof Job Unwanted: Why You Should Fix It Now, Not Later

This spring, while we we were making wild plans for a privacy fence along our corner lot backyard, rain water was slipping between crumbling slate and nonexistent sheathing on our porch roof. Its sudden condemnation re-routed our plans and we immediately launched a semi-DYI roofing project. Go-week was June 14th until finished (one week to the day), and I hired friend Steve Williamson for the expertise and tools [I am likely the most tool impoverished DYI'er in the U.S.]. Happy to provide a contractor recommendation for anyone in York County!

As it turns out, most of the roof damage was a result of a leaky roof that had been fixed some time ago, albeit very shoddily. The fix had come a bit too late to prevent serious rotting.

Since our neighbor's had already shed the slate from their side of the porch roof and the slate on our side was in very poor condition, our decision was easy. Pull off the slate and anything rotted beneath (crossed fingers, crossed fingers...) and replace with asphalt shingles.

Here's a few pictures to show what we did:

Demolition day rolled around and we made fairly quick work of removing the slate. It's a job best done primarily with a small pry bar and your hands, working from the top down. We dedicated a significant amount of time huffing the 1/3 or so of the slate tiles that were in good condition to the garage for re-use on our slate main roof or for landscaping purposes. We found significant parts of the old planking completely disintegrated, and I fell through on one or two occasions!

Proving that TV ads do occasionally work even on those who don't have a TV in their house, I signed up for WM's "Bagster" for this project and was impressed by the amount of stuff we put in it. A few days after scheduling pickup, a large truck showed up and lifted the bag by remote control crane into the bed of the truck. I paid short of $40 for the bag and $144 for the pickup. Totally worth it.

After removing all the old sheathing, we found the beams to be in pretty good shape, save for some rotting on the tops of the wood beams as seen below. It was beyond irritating to realize that the rotting was all dated and now completely dry. The previous owners had let the roof become leaky for some time, before they finally decided to do something about it. Excited that we'd be able to sister a few 2xs and get on with the new roof...

We got held up by the middle section of the eaves shared with our neighbor. There the rotting was significant. This wasn't altogether surprising- we knew water was slipping between some broken tiles and filtering down into the eaves. We just hoped that there was something left to hold the new roof up.

In the picture below you can see a new beam we managed to wedge on the neighbor's side of the roof to prop up their sagging shingles, and then a second sistered beam on my side (the right side). In retrospect, I wish we had extended a new beam the full length of the roof for peace of mind. The reality is, however, if we keep water out by maintaining the roof, it really won't matter.

We also took a big dip out of the roof by slapping 2xs along the beams.

Here's the repair on the eaves and corner of the roof a bit further along. We put the aluminum soffit (just like the neighbor's on the right) back up once we were finished.

At the end of day 2, this is what the roof looked like.

The old roof had no true flashing. Here, we used a grinder and then tucked the flashing into the brick.

On a side note, Linden Painters finished our neighbor's house, which included portions of shared architecture. Below, the left window is our and the right window is our neighbor's. Interestingly, the neighbor's window opens into a closet, whereas in our house the closet was removed to make more space in the bedroom.

Mortise Lock Repair 101

Now the the big renovation is complete, I've been able to find some time to get to the finer details of owning a 92 year old home. A few weeks ago we installed a rice paper window film to the bathroom door off our kitchen. The previous owners had used a curtain to provide the necessary privacy but we wanted something a bit more modern. It looks great! One problem: the heavy solid wood and glass door naturally hangs about halfway open. Since it took about an hour of shimming, adjusting, and cursing to get the door to close at all, I wasn't about to try anything fancy. Another problem: the latch on the door was not working and I haven't yet been able to find the correct Corbin key for the mortise lock. If you haven't seen an antique mortise lock up close, see below. They are truly amazing little gadgets:

They just don't make stuff like this anymore. The lock that I am holding is close to 5 lbs. of probably brass. But something is missing... Can you find it?

The spring, which causes the latch to rebound after the door knob is released had broken. In the picture, you can see most of the spring attached to the stationary peg while a small part is still attached to the hook and lever controlling the  lock. Where could I find a replacement? Lowes had a few springs, the smallest of which was the correct diameter but more than twice the needed length.

The picture is fuzzy, but what you're looking at is the spring from Lowes, snipped in half and re-bent on the end to make a loop.

I slid the mortise lock back into the door, re-installed the door knobs and face plates, and...

Voila! The Bathroom door stays shut! You can see the privacy film clearly in this picture, although not really the rice paper pattern.