August, 2011

I was doing a little digging online tonight and ran across the below information on genealogy.com.

Our house's builder was John B. McCullough, a Civil War vet raised here in Jefferson County.  I knew this much, but didn't know a whole lot more.  I made some notes below.

John B McCullough was born 14 Mar 1847 in Union Twnsp, Jefferson Co, PA, and died 18 Jan 1929 in Erie, PA. He married Henrietta Matson 15 Aug 1871. She was born Abt. 1847 in Union Twnsp, Jefferson Co, PA, and died Bef. 1927.


OBITUARY
Death claimed another of the few remaining Civil War veterans at Jefferson county, when John B. McCullough of Corsica died in Erie last Friday evening. January 18 at 9:30 o'clock after a week's illness, aged 81years 10 months and 6 days. Death was due to the infirmities of age.

Mr. McCullough had been a resident of Corsica for more than fifty years, where he followed his trade of carpentering. He was born on the McCullough farm in Union township on March 14, 1847, a son of Sheridan and Mary (Ross) McCullough. When the Civil War broke out, he joined Company G, 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry and saw much active service. He was twice wounded in the fighting around Richmond, Va. He was one of four brothers who served in the Union army during the war.

The deceased was united in marriage to Miss Henrietta Matson(1) of Union Twp on August 15, 1871. To them were born six children, five of whom survive one daughter dying in infancy. Mrs. McCullough preceded her husband in death a number of years ago. Surviving children are: S.J. and Enolia of Corsica, Acta of Wilkinsburg; M.M. of St. Mary's and Elizabeth wife of Marvin Rowley, of Bridgeville. He is also survived by two sisters: Mrs. Arma Orcutt of Corsica, and Elizabeth McCullough of Brooksville.

He was a member of Corsica Lodge I.O.O.F. and of Plagah Presbyterian Church.
Funeral services were held at the home in Corsica Monday afternoon at 3 o'clock conducted by Rev. Mr. Byers and burial made in Plagah(2) cemetery. The pallbearers ere Cad Orcutt, R.D. Simkins(3), W.B. Kennedy, George McMillin, Thomas Armagoat and C.C. Simpson.

Children of John McCullough and Henrietta Matson are:
i. Simone J McCullough, born 1876 in Pennsylvania; died Aft. 1929 in Corsica, Jefferson Co, PA.
ii. Enolia McCullough, born 1883 in Pennsylvania; died Aft. 1929 in Corsica, Jefferson Co, PA.
iii. Acta McCullough, born 1879 in Pennsylvania; died Aft. 1929 in Wilkinsburg, PA.
iv. Mark M McCullough(4), born 1891 in Pennsylvania; died Aft. 1929 in St Mary, PA.
v. Elizabeth McCullough, born 1893 in Pennsylvania; died Aft. 1929 in Bridgeville, PA. She married Marvin Rowley; born Bet. 1890 - 1895; died in Bridgeville, PA


1.  Miss Henrietta Matson was likely the daughter of John Matson, the man who deeded our land over to John McCullough.
2.  This certainly is supposed to read "Pisgah", which is the church/cemetery right up the road from us.  It is less than a mile away.
3.  R.D. Simkins would have been the father of the late Melvin "Mel" Simkins, our house's most recent PO.
4.  I wonder if Mark M. McCullough is the "MMM" carved into the door of our downstairs closet:

Also interesting to read that Mr. McCullough's funeral service took place in this house in 1929.  I would love to go back in time to see that.


I started the laundry room "refresh" on Friday afternoon.  And just like every other room in this house, it was GROSS.



Pulled the washer/dryer out for the first time, removed the mud sink, and removed the wallpaper.  Of course, the wallpaper was covering up tons of old water damage.  The POs slapped on some drywall mud and then wallpaper to cover it up.

Some of the paint scraped off easily to reveal this old wallpaper.  Any ideas on how old this could be?  1920's?  The laundry room is in the back addition, which is plank-framed like the rest of the house.  Anything newer and they would have used stud-framing, right?  The interior walls are drywall, which was "invented" around that time too I suppose.

Scraped off all of the loose compound, drywall, paint, wallpaper, dirt, and whatever else wanted to come off.  Also pounded in some loose nails.

Fixed the bad joints with mesh tape and compound and then skimmed the entire walls with a coat of compound.  Then sanded by hand.

Started painting.  I always wanted white walls and someone suggested black for the trim - so I went with it!

Got the first coat of white on the walls and around the trim.  Need to do at least one more coat of white to clean up the messy lines and then do a final coat of white.

Sorry for the bad lighting here.

The whole room will hopefully be done or close to done by next weekend.  The area behind the washer/dryer needed the most work, so I wanted this to be done first so I could put the appliances back in place.  The dryer needs a new gas line also (old one is improper/kinked).

Here's just another quick pic of something cool in our house.  I actually just discovered this today - it's the light in the hallway upstairs.  There was a hideous plastic shade attached to the light bulb which was hiding an old light fixture!  It does work, but I think I have only turned it on once.  It's likely original to the electrification of the house.

As usual it has a million layers of paint on it and a 75w (!) lightbulb, but it still makes me happy.  Resto project for some day!

A quick change of the light bulb:

I was given this awesome little table today.  It has been in my family since approximately 1919 - my mom's grandmother bought it around the time she was married.  Nobody knows the actual age of the table, or whether she bought it new or used.  We are also unsure if the marble top is original or not.  Does anybody have any estimates on the approximate age of the table?

It looks great with the old window and trim in our living room!

Sorry for the poor quality photos - my iPhone didn't like the room's lighting.  I'll get detailed pics later.

I am currently looking for something antique to display on top of the table - a lamp or similar.

Well today I had to replace the wax ring of the upstairs toilet since it was leaking down into the ceiling/wall below... overall a fairly easy, albeit totally disgusting, job.

Downstairs in the dining room, I have a suspended ceiling because there was a plumbing disaster in that bathroom in 1993 and they had to rip the ceiling apart.  I had never peeked above the ceiling tiles until today, but I wanted to open up the area and get a fan in there to dry it out.

Here are two pics of some historic bits I uncovered.

1.  This wallpaper

2.  The original green paint covering nearly 1" thick plaster.  This used to be an exterior wall before the rear addition was built.

Unfortunately it will stay as-is for a while longer.

Found this little gem:

Apparently, connecting the ground wires to the box but not together was common practice in the sixties.  This junction also contains a standalone ground wire (#10!) running back to the panel, another running to an outlet in the living room, and the run from the box to the bathroom is 12-2 w/G but the ground is #16.  Found out that stuff was forbidden by code in 1971.

Either way, the dishwasher now has its own 15A home run (going to convert to GFCI tonight), that junction box has been tidied up and the grounds have been tied together properly (though the #16 grounds are still a bit weird), and the entire circuit has been de-rated to to 15A.  I also installed new switches, outlets, and GFCI protection in the bathroom.  One more fire hazard averted!

Oh yeah... the electricians who worked on my place were super special people.  Also, the fact that they were doing some of this work by 1960's code is the other half of the problem.

My kitchen is a whole 'nother story and I plan to tackle it over this winter.  It's working fine for now, but it's not "to code" and definitely not done according to best practice.

One single 20A circuit serves entire kitchen, INCLUDING gas range/hood, refrigerator, and all countertop outlets.  Two of the countertop outlets are within 3' of the sink and nothing is GFCI protected.

I did peek inside the outlets and I do have 12/2 w/G but it's the same weird 1960's stuff with the 16ga. ground.  The outlets ARE actually grounded though; however, all of the terminations are back-stabbed  :x.  Ideally, I want to get the fridge and range/hood on their own dedicated 15A circuits and then do two separate 15A GFCI circuits for the countertop outlets.  Technically, the range is plugged into a countertop outlet since it is beside the range and not behind it... ugh.  I can't even begin to fathom how I am going to get new wires pulled through the walls in order to split this stuff out.

I've been working on more of the wiring (pretty much done with everything I need to do except the kitchen) and finished painting the laundry room.  Also scraped and painted the basement door (exterior), cleaned and covered the central air for winter, and started drawing up plans for a cement trough system to divert the water in the flood-prone basement into the sump pit.  Whoever poured the concrete floor in the '50s sloped it the wrong way, and then they hacked-in the sump pit in the '80s in the most random place ever... so the flood water doesn't run into the pit.  The water actually comes up out of the floor and not from the walls, so I am guessing there is a spring under the house.

I also washed every single window on the interior and exterior (had to borrow my dad and his extension ladder since the Andersen windows aren't tilt-wash type).  So much thick grey grime on them I had to use a scrubby sponge to remove it - they probably hadn't been cleaned since the eighties.  We can see through the windows now!  I also removed all of those ugly plastic grilles from the windows.  It's amazing how much better the house looks without those grilles.  One of the lower sashes upstairs won't budge so I need to figure that out.

July, 2011

As much as the old wiring in this house scares me, part of me is glad it wasn't fully re-wired recently.  I'm sure it would have been a hackjob.  The 200A service entrance and panel were installed in 2006 (does look like a pretty pro job), but they didn't touch the rest of the house.  But none of the electrical/plumbing in this house is to code at ALL.  I'm no master electrician, but I do know what not to do.

Well here are a couple of exterior shots since I haven't posted any yet - I've been working pretty hard at getting the house and property ready for the tomorrow since the house is basically right on the 4th of July Parade route (ignore my ugly car in the one pic, forgot it was parked there).  The hedges need a little more work and that huge laurel needs pruned, but I am going to wait until spring.  The sky is beautiful in these pics!

I trimmed the cedar tree up about 6.5 feet from the ground, and like the effect.  I need to get a little taken off the top since it touches the power lines.  I originally wanted to remove this tree, but I suppose I'll keep it.

By the way, the 3x5 flag hanging on the porch is VERY old - the PO left it since it belongs with the house.  I will only be using it on the patriotic holidays.

One of the 4 cats, Neeko, found a home in one of our kitchen cabinets the day we moved in.  The shelf liner I chose kinda goes with the somewhat retro kitchen.

Just figured I'd throw a couple pics up of a few of the decorative cover plates the PO had here in the house.  They are very solid feeling metal.

Here are two very heavy covers, quite similar in design but very different finishes.  Manufacture date is 1963.

This one is my absolute favourite, and I wish I could find more somewhere.  I don't really know what "style" one would call it, but it is really cool.  Age unknown, and it feels like it has been spray painted black.  Stamp on the back reads "WILLIAM SPENCER RANCOCAS WOODS N.J."

And THIS is inside one of the old three-way switches controlling the upstairs hall light.  Talk about scary!  Look how close those wires are to the box.  But I know this was how they did things back in the day.

Today I got around to starting on the walk-in closet in the guest bedroom.  It was still jam-packed full of the PO's garbage so my goal was just to remove that and replace it with our garbage.  However, when I was moving stuff out, this happened:

One or two of the nasty little carpet squares pulled up.  Yes the walls of the closet are cedar chip OSB...

So I kept going.

Found some pretty funky lino underneath, but as usual it was not in good shape (had paint all over it plus the black adhesive from the "tiles" of felt stuff).  I started to scrape the black adhesive off, and it was going OK, but I discovered that the linoleum ended halfway back and the rest of the floor was some nasty tar-paper stuff.

So I ripped it all up.  T&G floors in awesome condition - painted yellow though  :| .  Those nasty felt squares go back underneath the orange carpet in the bedroom too.  I can't even imagine living in a bedroom with that on the floor.  Someday it'll all go away!

But for now, I leave you with these two pics.  First is one of my babies, Bella, perched on the dining room window sill.  Second is what I found when I was fixing a messed up downspout drain this morning... mmmmm!

Here was my project last night and this afternoon:

Before:

After:

That was all done with a recipro saw, bow saw, and hedge loppers and was about 9 loads of branches and debris.  I'm still not done but I feel that I have made tons of progress.

And check out what I scored today...  a beautiful old door!  This door belonged to my grandpa who removed it from his old farmhouse just down the road from here.  He stashed it away amongst some junk in his barn that he was eventually going to have hauled away.  His house is much larger than mine and was built by a slightly wealthier family, though still a simple farmhouse - built in 1892.

Of course it has like 100 layers of paint on it, but it seems like it is in awesome condition.  This will be a restoration project of course.  I need a back door (currently do not have a proper back door, just a storm door), so that's probably where this will go even though it is really more appropriate as a front door.  Some of the old decorative hardware is still there, embedded under all the paint.  The doorbell does not currently work.



The exterior face stripped very easily, but the interior face is not going as well.

I found this really nice pattern hiding under all the paint.

Here is the interior side.  One of the reasons it is more difficult to strip is because of this faux bois layer, which is the second layer on the door.  The first layer is a gooey pale yellow which matches my floors upstairs!

Overall, I found yellow, the faux bois, green, blue, lavender, and white on the inside of the door - and I found green, blue, and white on the outside.  The USMC sticker on the window represents my dad, who served in the Marines in the 1980's.



I got started on my laundry room rewire project and made some progress.  I have decided that what I am going to is this:

1.  A 20A circuit with a single GFCI outlet which will serve the washer and gas dryer.
2.  A 15A circuit with a switch/outlet combo device.  The switch will be for the overhead light (basic porcelain fixture with a CFL) and the outlet will be for convenience.

Here is a pic of what I have to work with.  You can see why this configuration scares me.  Yes, that is old, unprotected NM cable fastened to the wall.  In the end, that ancient outlet and unsafe wiring will be gone.  Lucky for me, the only other thing on the same circuit as this is the basement lighting, which I plan to rewire anyway so they are on a single switch.  The laundry room light is not on the same circuit, and I can only assume it is tied into the bathroom circuit.

I am using an inexpensive wiremold type product to surface-mount everything.  Future plans for this room include a complete gut so I can combine it with the bathroom (don't worry, nothing's historic in here) so I'm not going all out with the hardware.


Here is a pic of my panel.  It's really clean and professional considering how the rest of the place is.  A professional would surely be able to point out some code violations but I'm happy with it.

This is the old laundry room light fixture which I eliminated.  I understand what they were going for here, but really?  Those are two #10 or #12 ground wires used as jumpers between the junction and the fixture.  The wiring in the box is old #14 ungrounded BX.

Here is a shot of the conduit system I used - it was cheap at the big box store.  As I said before, this is only temporary and has to last a few years.  This circuit is simply for the overhead light fixture and a 15A convenience recep (for a shop vac or whatever).  This is a standalone circuit run straight to the panel with new wire.

And here is a shot of the new light fixture on the ceiling (you can't really tell in the pic but the ceiling is really uneven, causing slight warpage of the plastic conduit.  I screwed all this down and did not use the garbage adhesive it came with.  You can see the old box up on the ceiling where I tied the junction back together (didn't test what the junction actually joins) and capped off.  I don't like this as a permanent solution of course, especially since it is not grounded.  I'll have to get that up inside the ceiling with an access panel.

Next step in here is to acquire some #12 wire so I can do the washer/dryer recep.  Then I can remove the rest of that wallpaper and paint everything white instead of that nasty smoker-yellow!



I got a package in the mail from the PO... she sent along 4 old photos of the house!  Check these out.


Captioned "Early 60's, perhaps late 50's - Brick siding, front porch had a wall all around"

Captioned "Taken in the 70's (after new hardware store was built in 1972).  Window on left was in the laundry."

I almost hate to say it, but I am happy for my vinyl siding - it looks a million times better than Insulbrick.  The house was vinyl-sided in 1985, so it looked like that for a very long time.  I love the original windows, dual chimneys, standing-seam metal roof(!), and details on the porch posts.  That stuff is long gone.  I also wish the full-size window was still in the laundry room (I wonder if it's buried in the wall).

I am a little disappointed to see that there is no nice trim around the windows/doors, but not too surprised - this house has no traces of "fancy" except for the trim in the addition.

Believe it or not, there are actually a lot of houses in this area which still have Insulbrick exteriors, so it could still fit in.  That stuff just makes the place look run-down.



I got a lot of things done today here at the house.  The wallpaper borders from the front foyer and the staircase walls have been stripped - surprisingly it came off with very little effort, and it looks great.

I also cleaned and scrubbed the front door, and took the "muntins" off to spray paint them white (once again they were a nicotine yellow).  It's a newish steel door, but I hope to do a few little things to improve the way it looks.

Then I continued working on my rewiring projects.  I picked up some 12/2 and got the washer/dryer circuit completed.  Also used some of the leftover to replace the furnace circuit.  Upon closer inspection, I noticed the furnace's breaker was actually a 15A, not 20A as I stated before.  But it was NOT grounded (because the run of old NM cable was 14/2 with no ground).  I feel so much better about the laundry room since there was no grounding/GFCI before and because the outlet would get hot when both the washer and dryer were in use at the same time.  I did discover the old NM cable in the laundry room was actually #12, not #14 as I had thought before.  It was in great shape too, not corroded or anything.

This was the junction (once again inside a light fixture box) which connected the laundry room outlet to the basement lighting circuit.  [b]Twisted and taped and shoved in a box.[/b]  The connection to the porcelain light fixture was poorly executed, so I replaced that as well.

After all that was done, I started cleaning up the basement some more.  I removed a bunch of the wiring which was no longer in service, including one branch of BX which was previously LIVE, never properly "abandoned", and could have easily electrocuted someone.  I collected all of the antique boxes and fixtures - I can't exactly put them back in service but I didn't feel right just throwing them out.

Here is a pic of a light switch which was on one of the abandoned circuits in the basement (which I can only assume was an old furnace circuit because there was an old transformer connected to it).  Somebody double-tapped the line side of the switch!  The piece of BX which was the 2nd tap had been cut off right at the box so I have no idea what it used to do.

This is the inside of one of those old surface-mount lighting outlets just for everyone's reference.

I also put a new plug on the dryer, because I noticed the old one had a cardboard insulator which had pretty much disintegrated.  This was what I found when I took the plug apart and unwound everything - that is totally unnecessary!

Going back to last Tuesday... I was outside cleaning up when I got the urge to rip the indoor/outdoor carpet off of the front porch.  I found a treated deck in great condition underneath - just need to wash off the rest of the glue.  The carpet was disgusting and never completely dried.  The same carpet is on the cement patio in the rear of the house and it will be coming off before winter this year.  Nasty stuff.

Removed the wallpaper border from the foyer and staircase:

And here is a cool old switch cover that I found in the basement yesterday.  I wish there were more of these!  I installed it in the stairway, even though we never use that light.