The Long and Winding Road to a Reasonable Number of Bathrooms.

new bathroom II
Originally uploaded by Athens Nikita

This is a small, but momentous project which is now at the verge of being done (Done! Done! Imagine chortling and rubbing of hands).

Originally, this big old house had roughly 7 bedrooms and 3 baths -- two on the 231 side (one shower-only on the second floor, one shower-only in the basement) and one miserable, tiny, awful, closet-sized bathroom on the second floor of 233. This, to put it gently, was not ideal. 

Not only did it suck attempting to share one godawful bathroom, but it also made having guests over kind of challenging. In fact, on multiple occasions I've had to guide guests to the second-floor bathroom because the process for getting to it from the first floor requires a Sherpa.

So we upgraded the existing bathroom by combining the bathroom and adjoining tiny bedroom. And then we got started on converting the under-stair closet into a second powder room.

We quickly discovered that we had underbudgeted a bit, and we also discovered that our under-stair closet was originally a staircase to the basement!

The process, which started in mid-November, went something like this:

1. Hire a local contractor to reconfigure the space for our purposes -- this meant ultimately, a lot of complicated work to reconfigure the plumbing and bring plumbing for the first time in history into the "old" (pre-1885) part of the house. And it also meant rebuilding the wall and floor structures to create a box that slopes down to about 6' in height at the back. This ultimately cost about $1,100.

2. Assess and repair plaster/wallpaper wall. We started with the idea of stripping the wallpaper and repairing the wall. But the wall was exceptionally damaged. And in step 3, you'll see why else the original walls weren't really going to get conservator-type treatment. So, ultimately, we did what we had to do, systems-wise, and skim-coated everything. Cost: $200.

3. Call in the electrician to consider fixtures and whatnot. Since the electrician is Chris, this ended up being free. But since the electrician is Chris, this also means that we now have four separately-switched fixtures, including a can fan. And as a bonus, we got a hallway accent light to light up this gloomy alcove. Fixtures and stuff cost about $350.

4. Call back the contractor -- have him install tile floor and grout. Cost: about $350. Have him install sink and toilet and faucet -- about $150 for the toilet, $200 for the sink (special low-profile corner sink), $120 for the faucet.  

5. Paint it! Maybe $60.

6. Install beadboard -- $180.

7. Er, put up the stuff that's still not up. In this case, piddling stuff like towel bars and that last fixture. Fixtures and stuff: $20.

So...let's see...roughly 15 man hours and $2730 later, we now have two bathrooms.  Come visit!

Merry Christmas Every One

merry christmas
Originally uploaded by Athens Nikita

...and especially to my contractor.

Now, I LOVE my contractor. I finally got a chance to inspect stuff, and I am so beyond thrilled with this stupid little door project. Without my telling him how to do it, he reused the door from the laundry that's being displaced, matched the woodwork on the "modern" side and matched the woodwork on the old side, and did the whole thing so that the old hinges were used and the old lock is on our side.

I'm pretty excited about the whole third floor space, actually. Here is the tiny bedroom, which if you'll look at the front of the house is the room in the center of the balcony on the third floor. It's only about 8' wide, and maybe 15' deep. You come up the stairs and it's on the landing. It has a really pretty radiator, too.

Anyway...on to more projects.  Thank you guys for reading.

Look What We Found!

Recovered Walkway III
Originally uploaded by Athens Nikita

Actually, look what Herman the German found.

In the last few weeks we've had Herman over to replace a drafty, damaged door of uncertain vintage (these came out of it). 

It seems like a small issue, but the door and its damaged sill and water infiltration were specifically enumerated as a problem requiring remediation in our homeowner's inspection during the purchasing process. And it was leaking huge amounts of heat.  So we needed to deal with it.

While in the process, Herman decided to replace the area around the sill. And while doing so, he found the first of a few dozens bricks and slate pavers -- each was buried about 4" down. The portion in the upper corner is more or less as uncovered, and the rest is reconstituted from the slates and bricks found.

More photos in my Flickr stream (here and below)-- enjoy!

Curtin Village

Hold My Calls

Originally uploaded by Athens Nikita

We lead lucky lives, most of the time. So, Saturday our plans were derailed by a bachelor party for a guy we don't know. Don't get me wrong -- he's an awesome guy. We're friendy now. But we didn't know him as of 2 p.m. on Saturday and by 7 p.m. we were at his post-bachelor hangout. Turns out one of his groomsmen is an old friends of my husband's and some other friends' and the mother-of-the-bride, who is a neighbor we hadn't met yet, connected the dots.

Anyway, the bride suggested a fishing spot to Chris. Chris really wants to fish, since we live in the fishing capital of Pennsylvania. I really want to be supportive, and spend some quality time exploring architecture.

Enter Curtin Village.

Chris got to fish in the gorgeous and tranquil Bald Eagle Creek, while I walked around and photographed darn near all of the Curtin Village historic ironworks. This site is really underrated, I think -- I'm used to historic sites that are sort of limping along, but this one is in pristine condition and open a surprisingly large amount of time during the summer.

Anyway, I played with my macro settings, goofed around with color saturation (since the sky was mostly a really lurid blue), and even tried a little action photography. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.


The photo stream at the bottom chronicles our adventures. Enjoy!

Bathroom renovation as of April 17, 2010

Bathroom renovation as of April 17, 2010
Originally uploaded by Athens Nikita

Here is the "Intermediate" -- new floor, new vanity, new mirror, and stuff is painted. We're still missing wall trim and a variety of improvements in the tub/shower area...

Which, you may have noticed, is no longer in the entryway to the room. Yay! The shower/tub is in the adjacent area, and looks kind of rough right now.  

We will also be building a bench over these radiators under the windows.

Here are the products we used:

• Behr's Pure Premium Paint in Cornsilk.
  
• Allure resilient flooring in  Cherry.
  
• The Valencia 3-piece euro vanity.
• The toilet is from Kohler -- can't recall what it was called.
• Glacier Bay "teapot" sink.

How To Research Your House

I am planning to blog out my new house's history in this space shortly, but I am still locating information about some residents. So I thought, while I am letting that information percolate, I would share the nuts and bolts of how one researches a historic (or any) house.



First, there are some pretty good resources out there. Use them!



But if you really want to know when your house was built, who lived in it, etc., you basically need to do the following:



1. Go to the local records room and research the deed. If you're in Athens, GA, you'll have to ignore the snooty professional parapros and law school students. But do that -- you have just as legitimate a need for those records as they do, and pulling them will give you a structure and some facts that will be very hard to get otherwise. Note: you may learn some very odd things in this process, since older deeds tend to include descriptives that would now be unusual or even illegal.



2. Search for local Sanborn maps. This will show you things like what your house's footprint looked like and what it was constructed of at various points in its life. It answers questions like "is this siding original?" or "was my craftsman house really built in 1960?"



3. City directories, which are usually in the nearest rare books library or heritage room, are AWESOME. Especially if you own a house that you suspect may have been rented at some point. City directories tend to contain information like who lives in a house, how old they are, and what they do for a living. In short, trace the individuals by any means necessary. Useful resources include census records, cemetery listings, old newspapers, city plans -- any historic records that might show your house or show how things that might affect your house (like the siting of the road it sits on) would have occurred.



4. Oh, you can also ballpark the date of construction or modification by taking a stab at the style, and there are some great resources for this, too, but this type of research can be awfully confusing depending on how much your house has been modified, how free spirited the architect was, or how avant garde the local design community was. I suggest you do it because it's fun, but two houses of similar style can be radically different in age depending on factors like the above. Or you could, like me, own a house that's basically a hodge-podgy mystery.



5. Also, you can try to date the house from its construction. Nails, in particular, are clearly characteristic of certain eras.



Here's a handy-dandy checklist!

Stuff We're Doing

Ok, so, as you guys know we're in the midst of a pretty extensive bath and kitchen redo, with the bath leading the way and affecting the kitchen. 

So... 

The bathroom has a holey floor, which has absolutely no insulation in it. We'll be fixing that. The washer/dryer closet is framed in and the bath tub is up in the room. And after all the consideration of barn doors, pocket doors, and so on the carpenter thinks he can take one of the doors from the attic and extend the door header so that the washer/dryer closet has double doors. Anyway, we had a big, lengthy series of discussions about how it's all going to shake out, such aswhere the vanity and toilet and lights go. 

We're also going to add hall lights, so that this area won't be so ridiculously dark. 

the kitchen ceiling, which when put back will not be dropped but will have a bulkhead running above cabinets and appliances on both sides (which is the only good way to get the vent above the stove legal). Removed skirting above the cabinets that are staying. What I think we're doing is doing a beadboard wainscoting, reusing and mostly leaving alone the sink side of cabinets, and using the short wall on the opposite side for the stove, fridge, and either an espresso machine bar with some open storage or a set of display cabinets. 

Stuff We got Done

Since we just rented out most of 231, I thought I'd share some photos we took while it was staged for showing:

The tiny bedroom/"hot box."


231's upstairs bathroom. -- it's too small to photograph most of it.


The front bedroom.


231's stair hall. 

This is the done stuff. Next post: the stuff in progress. 

Old House Philosophy

Philosophizing here, in brief: 

I feel like in some regards owning my house is a constant job of managing other people's prejudices and expectations.I know they mean well, but specific fallacies I get very tired of include: 

1. The idea that my house is going to take forever, and that old houses are a ton of work, and this would somehow not be the case if I bought something new. That's actually not true -- I am pretty lazy and I wouldn't buy an old house if it wouldn't will perform comparably to a newer house once it's not derelict. Besides which, I have yet to meet the person who doesn't invest some portion of their money into maintaining and altering their house, regardless of its age. 
2. The notion that newer is better. Sometimes, yes, but this view ignores the role that economic, legal, logistical, etc., factors play in material selection and manufacture. A 2X4 is not superior to a steel beam, necessarily, but a 2X4 happens to at one point be a better choice or even just the choice that's made given all the factors mentioned above. 
3. The notion that newer windows create savings, which is somewhat true. but that is a very simplistic statement that ignores when you individually would realize savings based on how inefficient the old ones are and how much new ones cost and also ignoring intermediate solutions. Also, the old windows are part of the historic fabric, which is the primary reason I own this house. I get that it doesn't matter to you, but it very much matters to me. 

Finally, for someone who loves them owning an old house is not always a practical matter. In my opinion they are beings, like books or other storied things, and I am writing the next chapter of their lives, such as it is. So my renovation choices have a moral component. In other words, no, I'm not interested in hiring some jerk to cover my house in vinyl siding or tearing out my historic woodwork to simplify the application of sheetrock. I do make compromises, but the fundamental compromise that I do not want to make is compromising the house's historic essence. 

Sweating the Small Stuff

We do a lot of little stuff.  I promise to upload some commentary on the big stuff, but really the majority of work that we do is small stuff.  

Specifically, we've only done a few things that cost more than $2,000.  Specifically, we did the drywall and plaster work that we had to do to get into the house, and that was about $3,000.  We bought all new appliances for the rental-side kitchen and that was about $2,500.  But the majority of stuff has been small, very small.  In fact, we've really spent nothing but our time in a lot of cases.  

We have now spent weeks stripping wallpaper, a task made worse and more complicated by the fact that the victorians wallpapered everything, and they generally wallpapered over old wallpaper.  So we have wallpaper on the walls and ceiling up to six layers deep.  Many implements are sold to make this better, and we tried using dissolving solution.  But we finally just bought a steamer.  It made the process both faster and less dusty, but still very slow.  

Another thing we did was use orange oil on most of the wood.  I know most people would call this "cleaning," but I don't think anyone had done any such things in our house in over a decade and what should be beautiful wood was looking pretty dry and awful.  A few liberal slatherings with oil and we had lustrous, gorgeous wood.  Of course, given how dry it is and the length of time before we did this, we'll be doing it again.  A lot.  

My dad also managed to break a few windows open -- some had been painted shut.  He and Chris also installed the original shutters, which are blackout shutters and were mercifully left in the attic by whatever idiot thought it was a good idea to take them down.

Chris did a ton of small electrical work -- which, of course, is why I married him.  (not really, honey)

And we installed a lot of lights, since the prevailing fixtures were decidedly 70s trailer park.  In the parlor, the light cost a mere $42. Crucial difference between Lowe's and Home Depot, as far as I can tell: Home Depot really sells the hell out of clearance items. We got two and the other will go in our bedroom. 

Economics

A lot of people look at our house and assume that it is bleeding us dry.  And that could be true, and sometimes seems like it is with the much higher utility bills that we're enjoying in Pennsylvania.  However, a lot of incentives and particularities are making our situation pretty economically feasible.  

First, while I wasn't thrilled that we had to delay our closing initially, I was thrilled to discover that between our original closing date and our actual closing date we became eligible for these lovely Homeowner's Tax Credits from the U.S. Government.  Thanks, Preznit!

Second, our house is a duplex, as well as has a detached carriage house, and that creates a lot of advantages.  We can, of course, rent out one side, and we will be doing so as of April 1th.  We also get to depreciate not only improvements to that side of the house, but utilities and other things relating to the administration and improvement of the shared environment. If both units are rented at market rent, we actually will cover our mortgage entirely.  So, not too shabby.

Third, we are eligible for a wider variety of incentives than we would be eligible for either as owners of single-family property or as owners of commercial property, allowing us to potentially take advantage of both.  More on this later, as we attempt to balance our desire to restore our historic home with our desire to be as environmentally responsible as possible.  

Imaging Offers Options

Technology shifts paradigms, and the recent laser imaging featured on the pages of the New York Times is no exception. The Scottish team's imaging has provided a means to virtually reconstruct damaged edifices and measure the unmeasurable. It is, supposedly, superior to all the technology that was use before it.

However, I am a cynic, and I am specifically cynical that the laser technology is not plagued by some of the same challenges that apply to more traditional methods of envisioning and measuring historic structures. After all, the first measurements derived from observation were derived hundreds of years ago, and those can be highly accurate. Yet they still depend on a standard of measurement based in physical objects, which of course do decay. Likewise, laser technology isn't divorced from the physical realm. Light decays, and its measurements are based on physical standards, which also decay. And of course these machines are operated humans, and humans err.

Translating the Stories of the Dead to the Living

I think too often we forget about all the humans involved in historic preservation, and in the committing of oral and other history to the next generation. Which is why people like Christina Marshall, featured in a Banner-Herald article titled "Athens Cemetery History Set in Stone" should be featured more often.

Too often historic preservation is boiled down to exemplary architecture or even remnants of physical space. Tombstones can certainly take this form, since their history is written more or less upon them. On their face, tombstones are a form of funerary art and they mark the passage of a life. However, tombstones, like most other physical spaces and markers of the past, exist in a context that can be very complex. Without skilled interpreters, or at least passionate ones, this context tends to go unrecognized.

Oconee Hill, like a lot of others of its vintage, has been altered over the years to allow the dead to move for reasons as varied as marital status changes of the survivors, because of other cemeteries changing status, or because of political or social context There are reasons why one grave has an elaborate headstone and another is lost in the undergrowth, or why one is lovingly tended and another is neglected. The space itself tells some of the story, but a historian's voice communicates it more effectively to the fellow living.

$1 Houses!

UC Berkeley has an offer for an enterprising buyer in the San Francisco Chronicle: two turn-of-the-century homes for just $1. Well, and a commitment deposit of $100,000 and a commitment not to destroy any of the surrounding trees.

Actually, this may be a good deal for the buyer (I have my doubts), but it's a terrible deal for historic preservation. As is usually the case, Berkeley wants the land and not the houses. Prohibited, philosophically disinclined, or otherwise limited from demolition, the university offers the houses up for removal. In the process, the houses will be at minimum removed from their historic context -- it's better than demolishing them, but not much. Most likely the houses will suffer significant damage and lose a lot of their historic fabric.

It's too bad Berkeley can't apply some of its famed alternative thinking and figure out a way to incorporate these houses into its campus plan. Surely some departments need office space, or some students need housing. Or, heck, other articles in the Chronicle have been reporting on Berkeley's efforts to find permanent housing for its new President and Provost -- maybe they'd like to move in?

Preservation on its Merritts

I was delighted to see this recent article in the New York Magazine on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut -- not only is Merritt a pleasure to drive (most of the time), but it remains more or less in historic form. I also really enjoy unconventional preservation challenges, so highways are right up my alley.

The article notes, correctly, that a historic highway is a delicate thing, and it's often undone incrementally with good intentions. A signal upgrade here, a widening there, and suddenly a historic route is unrecognizable as a snarl of traffic or a maze of Jersey barriers.

The Merritt, though, is most distinguished by its historic bridges, which are somewhat likely to be protected if the awareness exists. It's tempting to widen a bridge. It's also very expensive, very complex, and very inconvenient. And if the bridges are also recognized as the architectural gems that they are, perhaps that will be sufficient to aid in their preservation.

Xenophobia or Cultural Bias?

I find the recent New York Times article on the renovations afoot at the Hotel Lambert on the Seine fascinating.

There are the obvious intrigues of historic preservation, such as endless debates about installing elevators, accommodating cars within designs that predate the invention of them by hundreds of years, and so on. But leave it to the french to make the story also about xenophobia and cultural bias.

Naturally, the complaint is that the proposed renovations would threaten the cultural patrimony of France itself. This is generally a good thing to be concerned with, but for two things:

1. The french government has a lot of safeguards, and it appears that the use of a particular architect who is well-versed in just the sort of delicate and complex restoration that is proposed will probably ensure that it is done properly, at least with proper oversight.

2. Similarly histrionic groups said the same thing about Euro Disney. Which, to be fair, is an abomination, but hardly a nefarious mechanism for degrading France's cultural patrimony.

So I suppose I have no idea what to make of the competing sides, except to note that it would be a shame if a proper and well-done restoration were averted due to hysteria.

A Night With Al Capone's Ghost

I've always been fascinated with Alcatraz. Raised on true crime novels about the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, I was fascinated by The Rock from an early age. When I finally got to visit it a few years ago on one of what were then experimental night tours, I felt like I had been there before. It's a interesting site -- people think of the prison, obviously, but it has a lengthy and complex history going back to the colonial era that is evident in the physical attributes of the place.

It's so close to San Francisco that a quick jaunt will allow you to visit and the prisoners could hear the city's parties on major holidays -- yet the tides were so perilous that no one has decisively been known to escape. It's also a big challenge for the National Park Service. Shut down due to the logistics of keeping it supplied and maintained, Alcatraz is a huge and rotting landmark. It is a hell of a challenge, and when you visit you will see entire buildings more or less abandoned to decay.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see the Night in Alcatraz's D Block a Haunting Experience article in the San Francisco Chronicle. While I'm sure there are pitfalls to allowing civilians to maintain machinery, I feel strongly that a landmark like Alcatraz has no hope of surviving without the investment and involvement of the public.

And why does the public invest? Some clearly are invested in heritage. Some must get a thrill. Some are interested in criminal history. What they all seem to have in common is a desire to experience a unique and genuine connection with the place. And by literally interacting with the physical environment of Alcatraz, both the place and the people are altered.

"Permitting Issue" Threatens Unconventional Business

The recent articles about the permitting issue in the Athens Banner-Herald have been raising all kinds of thoughts for me, as a preservationist, and also as someone who's passionate about land use.

For starters, this is the kind of case that gets people worked up about government intervention in people's lives, consistency, fairness, and so on. Jittery Joe's, which I should disclose I am heavily physically dependent on and have been patronizing since 1994, when it was actually run by its founders and not franchised, has been operating the roasting location for at least five years. It has been operating as a roaster with some retail since nearly the beginning. So why is Athens-Clarke County just now swooping in to demand that permits be issued to accommodate the parking that makes the retail possible?

Beyond that, the whole issue is very odd because directly across the street until about five years ago a feed mill operated, and that feed mill functioned with about an equally intensive retail use and with about as little improvement to the parking surfaces in the vicinity. In fact, if you went back 50-some years in the area where the Jittery Joe's roaster is located, you would find virtually all of the businesses in the vicinity operating as some form of factory or production facility with a little retail. There was a feed store, a general store, and a number of farm/well/building material suppliers. And none of them had what Athens-Clarke County would consider a legal parking lot.

So, ad hoc it may be. But the roaster is actually operating in line with the historical land use of the area. Further, the type of building that the roaster occupies is one of the most endangered types of properties -- it is a quasi-agricultural and non-permanent structure fashioned out of tin and brick. It has no chance of becoming a B&B or house museum, has little chance of gaining any kind of statuatory protection, and in general is highly likely to be demolished in favor of more solid and formal structures. So the roaster is one of the few chances that such a building has to continue existing.

Basically, while I get Athens-Clarke County's perspective on the issue, I'd hate to see it cause the roaster to case being viable. It's basically its building's only hope.