Coal Dust & Electricity

I can't imagine a time where entire cities ran on coal. All the steam boilers, smelters, and fireplaces being shoveled full of this burning black rock. Everything, everywhere all dusty and sooty. The city still essentially runs on coal, it is just burned in a central location far away where no one has to think about it and piped in as nice clean electricity. Anyway, to my point.. Old houses used coal fireplaces for warmth. That translates into today as lots of coal dust and soot pouring out of all the demo areas. I've got the upstairs quarantined pretty well, so fortunately it isn't an issue. I just had hoped that I would be rid of the stuff once I finished wallowing in it under the house. Guess not.

Buzzsaws great grandpa was a coal dog

Balloon!!!

As I was losing myself in demolition and thoughts of how I was going to go about finishing everything, I hit a major road block. This old house is balloon framed! When we bought this place I knew that there was a chance it was indeed balloon framed, but didn't see any obvious signs. I was hopeful it wasn't because they started moving to platform framing around the time the house was built.

Balloon framing...

Everybody Loves Destruction!

The upstairs demo is moving right along. I've gotten over the self leveler on the floor problem and moved on to other things. As the demo progresses, I just keep finding more and more goofy "fixes" or unskilled DIY projects from the previous tenants. Hopefully it is truly unskilled DIY and not actual contractors that did this... If you hire a contractor, make sure to get references and actually have some concept of what work they will be doing, what steps they need to take, and how the finished product is supposed to look. Anyway, I snapped some pics of the overall demo so far and some things that I've run into.

The Layer Game

Upstairs is officially under quarantine! 

Mini Projects: Chair and Fence

Hey my peoples!!

I've been tinkering around with some mini projects as an excuse to play with the router. I do have an ulterior motive for the mini projects though. It gives me more time to build up my tool infrastructure in preparation for the upcoming big upstairs renovation. I've still got to build a big router table and table saw setup for all the finish work that we will be doing up there. If I had my way and lots of time, I would build the furniture also. I am still leaning toward building the vanity and built in cabinets though.. we'll see. Anyway... On to the mini project pictures!!!!

Mini Project: Old Vigorelli Sewing Table

       We picked this old sewing table up a while back at a local thrift store in an inexpensive attempt to furnish our empty house.  I think it originated some time back in the 60's or 70's judging from the lima bean inspired color of the sewing machine.  Vigorelli was (perhaps still is?) an Italian sewing machine manufacturer that made machines for heavy duty materials.  Unfortunately the sewing machine on our table made a better door stop than a sewing machine. So off went the machine and now we have a charming little entry way table! Check out our handy work on this cutie! 

Before

Title Bout

I know most of what I've been blogging about lately is boring old foundation stuff.. but there is hope!

Quickie - Dr. Miles Restorative Nervine

"... for nervousness or nervous exhaustion, sleeplessness, hysteria, headache, neuralgia, backache, pain, epilepsy, spasms, fits and St. Vidus' dance."

                                                                           ~ from Dr. Miles Restorative Nervine label

Impromptu Demolition ...er... "Exploring"

Hello there!


I've got good news and not so good news, but it is all relative so I'm just going to start rambling on... probably get on a soap box now and again.

Quickie - Dungeon Update

I'll confess.. I missed my goal of having the foundation complete by the end of March. However, I didn't miss it by much! The last beam is in (apologies to my lower back) and I'm currently leveling the remainder of the house. Yay.. still a lot of work to do, but the majority of the back breaking labor is finished! Now I can focus on the new master suite!! Ooooohhh Ahhhhhh! You cannot understand how much we are looking forward to cleaning up in a shower with properly functioning hardware!

For those of you who didn't know....

Our house was held up by logs (see below)