July, 2013

Well after over a year and a half, I guess it's time to start updating this blog again!  A lot has happened at the McCullough house, but I haven't been documenting all of it.  Life has been absolutely crazy lately, but I'll try to bring the blog up to speed so I can start sharing it with people.

January, 2012

Well winter is here with a vengeance so I thought I'd share some pics.

Also, here's a pic of the "rack" I built in the basement out of spare/repurposed treated 2x4 lumber for the old windows and doors that I have collected so far.  My attic hatch is barely large enough to fit a small person through, so I have to store the stuff in the basement.

Today I removed the carpet from the stairs.  I, of course, happily complied!

The steps are in good condition, though the finishes are not.  The finish you see is (I think) someone's not-so-great attempt at a faux woodgrain finish.  Nothing we can't live with for a while though!

In other news, I am almost done skimming and sanding the walls upstairs and I have picked out a couple of test colours.  I definitely want the red, as this is the colour I found under all the wallpaper - but the Sherwin Williams counter person made it a bit too dark when he tried to match it to my sample.  I'm going to have it fixed and it's probably the one I will go with.

Well today (January 18, 2012) is the 83rd anniversary of Mr. John B. McCullough's death.  It's a shame his house isn't in better condition!

On this coming Saturday, at 3:00 pm, it will have been 83 years since Mr. McCullough's funeral service was held in this house.

The stairway and upstairs is now a migraine-inducing bright white (sealer primer on both the walls and the trim).  As you can see, everything needs another coat before paint, and there are still a couple patched areas which will need sanded and smoothed before I can try to reproduce the wall texture on them.

I actually bought a fancy $18.00 4" paintbrush today and did all this with the brush.  Now that's hard on the hand muscles for sure!  By the end, I was starting to get pretty good with the technique.  Hopefully I can paint with the brush too - I think it will give these walls a more authentic look.  The only problem with the brush is that it sheds bristles like crazy.  I haven't figured out why, but I'm pretty unhappy that I had to keep digging bristles out of my primer job.

Even with the bright white, I still can't take a good picture with my camera or with my phone.  There is just no way to get light into this space.

I was in contact with the Jefferson County Historical Society recently and one of the curators recommend that I purchase A History of Corsica, Pennsylvania 1802-2010.  I tracked down the author, who lives about 10 mins away, and purchased a copy of the book.

Check out what I found - no source was cited but it is really exciting!  1860!!!!

I had a laugh about the 'nails' comment. It is very random.

My house is in the "Places of Interest" section in the book.  The photo above is obviously not my house - it's the Hotel Glenn which was visited by at least one US President back in the day.

Now I REALLY have motivation to go research the last 2 deeds at the Court House.  Unfortunately, they operate during the same hours I work and I'm not sure when I'll be able to go.  I might have to send someone on my behalf.

I also found a couple of aerial photos showing the house pre-1970's and a VERY old photo of the Hotel Glenn, just up the street from here, which MAY partially show our house in the background.  I have to walk up there and look from the vantage point of the photo to see if it is this house or if it's another building.

December, 2011

What I did do over the Thanksgiving holiday week/weekend was painted the trim, windows, and doors in the spare bedroom white - so the only thing left that hideous yellow is the ceiling.

Here's a pic of the old door at night - I hated to put another coat of paint on it but rest assured it will be stripped and refinished someday with the rest of the original woodwork.  I just couldn't leave it yellow.  The rest of the trim in this room is a cheap replacement and will go away someday too.

Then, this weekend, I got to work on the Cat Room.  I painted the built-in wardrobe doors and trim, crown molding, window, window casings (not original), frame and doors of the built-in shelves, and ugly door.  Didn't paint the baseboards since I'd rather not have another layer of paint on them.  Also filled holes and skimmed cracks.

And for reference, this is how all that looked when we moved in.

Next weekend, I am going to paint the room the same colour as the living room (Lazy Gray) because there is a whole gallon leftover.  It's going to look SO much better.  I grew tired of the PO's orange colour pretty quickly.  Plus, it almost exactly matches the colour of the cat litter!  Ick!

This was actually the room the PO used as her bedroom after her husband passed.



Also, this railing upstairs is the only bit of unpainted woodwork in the entire house.  The PO started refinishing it (stripped paint and then varnished) but didn't do the entire thing.

The PO said the original front porch was constructed of chestnut and that she wouldn't be surprised if there was chestnut inside the house too.  Unfortunately I have no idea what I'm looking for - I am familiar with pine and that's about it.



Here are the pics of the Cat Room which we painted a couple of weekends ago.  This is the same colour grey as our living room.  I didn't do any plaster work or anything because I'm not looking for perfection here.  The old cracks give the room some character.

Also, the other night I was mad at my car so I felt the need to destroy something... I ripped down all the wallpaper in the upstairs landing area and in the downstairs entry foyer.  I got an unexpected surprise when I discovered three layers of wallpaper downstairs and the first layer was applied directly to the bare plaster.  This is going to be a lot more work than I anticipated, but that's the way it goes!

Downstairs (after about 2 hours of scraping):

Upstairs.  Not too much work to be done here to prep for primer and paint.  I need to remove the plastic "crown moulding" stuff, skim a couple of seams, sand a bit, and then I'll be good to go.  By the way, that ugly chrome coat rack thing is going to be going away, and I will be looking for an old armoire or such to store coats there.

By the way, I made a potentially interesting discovery up here.  The narrow door in the second picture leads to the upstairs bath.  That entire wall is hollow and finished with OLD sheetrock.  This confirms the bathroom was not there originally (makes sense in an 1880's house) - though it really makes me wonder what this space was originally used for.  It wouldn't have been just an open area would it have?  That seems like a huge waste of space, and not what this house is all about.  Since none of the bedrooms originally had closets, could this have been a shared closet?

October, 2011

I pulled up the carpet from the spare bedroom!  More specifically, I removed the following layers from the floor:

1. Icky orange 1970's carpet (attached with nails of course)

2. Icky orange 1950's felt squares (with between 4-9 nails in each!)

3. Old linoleum around the border

4. Tar paper underlayment with 1950's newspapers underneath in the center of the room

And finally - the pine floors in great shape, all things considered.  It is very dry and the finish is missing from quite a bit of it, but it shouldn't be bad to refinish later.  Depending on how historically accurate I want to be, I'll either repaint brown or sand and varnish/shellac.

I have already removed at least 100 staples from the wood and I am not even halfway done pulling staples.  I will take a pic of the staple pile when I'm done - it's insane.  Luckily the nails they used were very short so the damage to the wood is minimal.  There are a couple of "patches" they made out of tin (likely to cover knot holes) and then there's this:

But all-in-all not too bad.  A dresser hides this hole anyway so I'm not too worried about it.

In case you're wondering, the furniture pictured has a history too: it was mine when I lived at home, my mom used it when she grew up, and her older sister had it prior to that.  So it has been in my family for at least 60 years.

I can't believe people did things like this to the old floors, but I am grateful for the protection it provided from being abused for the last 50+ years.

Here are some more pics I took in August and forgot to post! This is the "cat room" - the smallest of the bedrooms and the one which hasn't been "remuddled" over the years. The cat-tree, toys, food, and litter boxes are in here. The cats are so spoiled!

And here are pics of the living room with all our furniture and stuff. Those false beams have GOT TO GO! I will do this whenever I buy the white ceiling paint for the rest of the rooms. I was indifferent about them when we moved in but now I hate them, as they obviously are not appropriate. I hope to also find a salvaged door to install for the bathroom and trash the ugly brown hollow-core door. 

Well lately I have been fixing hack work like this: Range hood connection - ground wire not hooked to ground screw, wires generally a mess and not taped.

One of the kitchen receps (they all looked like this) - ground wires connected to the box and not the device and also not under a green screw, and the wire is clamped incorrectly. Unfortunately a couple of these boxes were like the one pictured and didn't support a ground screw so I still had to use the clamp screw. This one had a lovely burnt neutral wire too. Ugh.

 Also fixed all of the back-stabbed receps in the master bedroom, installed some outlet insulators to help with drafts (still need a few more though), grounded and GFCI protected the dishwasher, and started insulating water pipes in the basement. I still need another ~30' of pipe insulation and need to figure out how to handle a section of asbestos wrap I found encapsulated by fiberglass, insulate the rim joists, etc before winter comes.

I mentioned that I had not yet inspected the luminaires throughout the house because I started with the receps and switches...


This is the dining room "chandelier" I was talking about and it is all hidden under a nasty suspended ceiling.

All fixed.  Ignore the hack work on that furring strip - all I had was a hack-saw.

Unfortunately that didn't fix the "buzzing" noise coming from the bulbs.  Each bulb seems to have a different level of buzzing, so maybe they just don't like to be dimmed.  No noise when on full brightness.

I also fixed the connections at the dimmer... they had used wire nuts with no metal insert to attach the dimmer to the switch leg.  They just pulled right off with no un-twisting.  Idiots!


Also took some time to strip layers upon layers of paint from the old bakelite receptacle in the living room.  It is a little faded underneath but it came out great!  Unfortunately I didn't take a before picture because it was kind of an impromptu project but everybody knows what caked on yellow paint looks like.

Got another one cleaned up today.  This is in the Cat Room.  It was packed full of dust and fuzz - this one could have been considered a fire hazard.

Before

After

Yes it's crooked, but I just re-attached it using the same holes as before.  This one's actually NAILED to the wall.





I was messing around in the basement insulating pipes and what not, and I found this little gem in a plastic bag:

Am I correct to call this an Art Deco style fixture?  Either way, I absolutely love it and I am almost 100% certain it came from my downstairs bathroom.  There is an outline of where it was on the wall and it is the same brand as the ceiling fixture.


So I went about installing it:

Flimsy fixture probably from the "big blue box".  I recently discovered that the real estate agent TOLD the seller to replace the light fixture before listing the house because it was "dated".  I am so happy the PO saved it.

Installed.  It goes nicely with the old medicine cabinet.  Unfortunately someone cut holes to pull wires to the new fixture so I'm going to have to get creative and cover the hole.

This was just a sweet picture I took by accident:

Such an improvement though.  Now I just need to paint that paneling so it's at least presentable since I can't afford to take it all down at this time.

And then of course I took down the ceiling fixture to inspect the wiring and found they had switched the neutral wire instead of the hot.  So that's fixed now.




While I was in the spirit of fixture replacement, I removed this abomination from the front foyer

and installed a vintage porcelain lampholder for now.  It came from an abandoned circuit in the basement and after a quick cleanup, it looks brand new.  This light hardly ever actually gets used so the 35W incandescent isn't really an energy concern to me.

Was outside mowing the grass and doing some more exterior cleanup and made a couple of discoveries -

1.  Brick "window wells" with foundation vents!  They were buried under dirt, leaves, bricks, and pieces of plexiglas the PO put there(?).  And they work!  I will have to get some covers for these before the snow starts.  I'll backfill around the brick with some gravel instead of pushing the dirt back around them.  This area of the house is always in the shade so the soil never dries.

2.  Also, something I never noticed before because it was always buried - the foundation under this side of the house is made with recent-looking CMU so it has definitely been replaced at some point.  I'll have to ask the PO when/why that was done.

Also, yesterday's project was ripping down a studded wall in the basement which covered up the old foundation wall.  Of course I forgot to take a "before" picture - but here is the result:

I have some patching to do and need to add some more spray foam around that window but I'm happy that wall is gone.  The foundation was never allowed to dry out so I'm sure that was not healthy for it.  Based on the datestamps on the lumber, it was constructed in 1995.  BTW in the pic, you can see what are probably the original basement windows - they were stashed on top of the cistern.  I plan to recycle the treated 2x4 studs and plywood sheeting to build some basement shelves in the future.

And here's something I haven't posted yet - the antique well pump.  The pump kicks on but the tank is ruptured so it'll need repaired/replaced before I can start using the well water.

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to scavenge an 1850's house that a coworker is tearing down (more on that subject later).  Here are a couple items we found in a box on the basement stairs - mostly old lamp parts and stuff.

The one I want to draw focus to is the fixture with the porcelain base, short cloth cord, and brass lampholder (far left of the pic).  This is called a "suicide light", right, because you basically take your life into your own hands when you reach up high to turn this free-swinging, bare-bulb thing on?

It is really nice and in awesome condition.  I carefully scrubbed a lot of sooty stuff off of the cord to reveal that it the cloth covering has a green/white pattern.


A coworker of mine recently bought the house adjacent to theirs - this house had been a rental for the last 12 years or so and prior to that was owned by an elderly lady.  She and her significant other bought the house with the specific intent to tear it down - the reason being the house's foundation is shot and the house is "sliding" off the foundation and in the direction of their house (which is probably 5 feet away).  In addition, it was owned by a slum lord and occupied by druggie tenants and they did not like having this type of people as their neighbours.

We were chatting one day at work about my house being from 1880 or so, and she said she was tearing this down next year.  I immediately asked for the opportunity to salvage some trim, flooring, fixtures, or hardware for my house since I am missing a lot of that stuff.  She said "sure" and that was that, but it wasn't supposed to be demo'd until next year.

Last week she said they got rid of the trash tenant and cut the utilities, and that her SO decided he was going to start demo NOW and his goal was to have the house down by the end of November, so if I wanted anything I need to come soon.  I was all ready to go and give the "save this old house and don't tear it down" speech, but when I got there I changed my mind quickly.

The structure is bigger than mine, a vernacular house that looks like it would have had gothic influences (there are tons of very similar houses in Punxsutawney, in varying states of disrepair/modernization).  My coworker says it is very similar to their house, which is much larger and fancier, but she said it looks like it was designed by the same person.

The place is an absolute cess pool, smells like nasty old rental, water damage and black mold everywhere, the 1940's kitchen addition looked like it was literally going to fall in that very day, poorly installed white vinyl siding, mis-matched replacement windows, bad roof, swampy muddy yard, horrible drywall work inside, and "popcorn" stucco on EVERYTHING - walls, ceilings, overspray on trim, etc.  It was raining that day and water was coming in through the roof in quite a few places (it would run down the wall and straight into the basement).

So I took "the tour" and took note of all the old character that was still left in the house.  Apparently the tenants were allowed to do some remodeling and they removed some of the wood work (and took it with them when they vacated) but there was still plenty remaining, mostly upstairs.  All the old doors and hardware was there and they were VERY close in style to the doors I need for my house.  It turns out they are all too small, but I was excited for a while there.

And yes, the house is sliding off its foundation.  The house has a small basement but mostly crawlspace with stone/earth "piers" holding it up - and they were all crumbly and tilted in the direction of my coworker's house.  The old asbestos-clad "octopus" furnace was still in the basement, though not in use.

We found this box of lighting parts on the basement steps - along with tons of household items from the 50's-60's - food/product packaging, and most notably an intact and full glass bottle of Welch's grape juice.  The owners are going to try to sell some of this stuff on eBay but they didn't want any of the electrical things.

I am going back this Sunday to start carefully removing baseboard and trim so I can stash it at my house and hopefully re-use it some day.  The baseboard is pretty similar to what's in the "new" part of my house though I don't think it's as tall.  At this point I don't really care, because if I don't take them they are going to the landfill.  I'm considering taking the doors too if noone else wants them.


No pics yet because the electricity was cut and we were exploring by the light of our cell phones last night.  I'll be taking some long extension cords, shop lights, and battery powered lanterns with me on Sunday so I'll be able to get some pics of this poor old house for everybody.  The place could have had TONS of potential if the foundation issues and water damage had been addressed earlier and it hadn't been hacked up by tenants.

I always try to advocate saving these old homes but I have to agree that this one needs to go, as much as I hate to say it.



Here's a more organized photo of the stuff I got - I still couldn't get a bright enough pic.  The lighting in this house just isn't good for taking pictures apparently.

Today's project was painting the ugly door in the living room because I was tired of looking at it.  Also installed a rim lockset from my stash.  I still need to finish patching the holes in the door/trim where the modern lockset was, but I think it looks TONS better!  Even better would be to find an old door to put here.

Here are some pics from my adventure salvaging parts from that house.  The poor old house is in atrocious condition and super gross.

I salvaged quite a bit of baseboard from that house.  Some of it was in worse shape than it appeared to be originally (water/termite damage) but I got what was worth saving (~30 pieces).

This is one of the bad spots in the foundation (of the kitchen addition).  I couldn't get to the basement today to show you the worst of the damage.

Here's the front of the house.  There are 2 front doors?  I can guess that it originally had tall and narrow double-hung windows with either a curved or spade-shape top, some sort of detail work in the gables where those boxed-in sections are, and simple yet noticeable window/door trim.

The real nasty and rotting kitchen addition.

The back of the house.

The rest of these just show what the rest of the place looked like, though it was much worse in person.  Believe me.

Here are the doors.  They have a faux woodgrain finish and intact/working hardware.  Another coworker is taking the doors this week because they are a perfect fit for her house.  We weren't sure if she wanted the casings or not, but if not I will come back for them before the house is razed.