Historical Sleuthing

I'm so impressed with the amazing and curious items other housebloggers find in walls or tucked under floors of their old houses as they do demolition.











Me, I've had to settle for various indistinguishable pieces of rusty iron dug up in the back garden, the random buried roofing slate, and once, a very sharp slate nail I discovered when it pierced my finger, making me very glad I recently got a tetanus shot.

But late this evening I found something very curious indeed. I'd finished prying off the last long piece of baseboard trim in the dining room and was kneeling down with the pliers to pull out the nails from the back side. And I noticed a piece of paper sitting against the plaster at the foot of the wall, where the baseboard had been.

This is what I found:

A Christmas postcard, with most of the message erased by the elements and Time . . .

And on the other side . . . Well, this is odd. Not what I would have expected.

It's signed "Kathryn," which is the name of one of two women, mother and daughter, who lived, together and in succession, in the Sow's Ear from 1920 to 1981. Whichever Kathryn signed this, I'd say she did it closer to 1920, considering the style of the card.

But wouldn't you expect it to be to the lady of the house, and not from her? But it's addressed to a Mrs. M. M. Moore, who lived on a street four blocks over and five blocks up from here. And it's got a stamp on it. Why was this Christmas card never sent? How did it end up between the baseboard and the dining room wall?

Maybe the McLaughlins were doing renovations back then and the baseboard was loose? I've found evidence that sometime in the past some of the dining room trim has been removed and replaced. The casing around the double windows for instance. I can tell because the wallpaper just under the current layer goes down behind it. But that wallpaper also appears on the "new" drywall that was put up by the POs-1 sometime in the 1980s or early '90s. And there was only one set of nails in the baseboard I pried off this evening. I seriously doubt it was loosened in the 1920s, so soon after the house was built in 1916 or before.

So again I ask, How'd the card get there?

Here's my theory: Back when the house was new and there weren't four or five layers of wallpaper on the walls, there must have been a crack, a gap between the plaster wall and the baseboard there under the dining room windows. I visualize some piece of furniture set under that window, a side table, maybe, or even a buffet. Mrs. (or Miss) Kathryn McLaughlin sits at the dining room table, doing her Christmas cards. As she signs, addresses, and stamps each one, she sets it on the pile on the table under the window. But the pile is unsteady. It slides. It tips. And unbeknownst to her, the card to her dear friend Mrs. Moore goes hurtling down behind the-- hey, I think I'll argue for a buffet or some other solid-backed piece of furniture--behind the buffet and slots itself into the gap between the baseboard and the wall. Maybe it went only partway in at first, and Kathryn might have noticed it if the buffet (or whatever) hadn't been in the way.

But it was and she did not, and dear Mrs. Moore did not get her Christmas card in 1924 (or whenever), leading to who knows what rift in their friendship. And over the years, as the house settled, that card settled, too, working its way down and down until it could no longer be seen at all, concealed there as layer upon layer of wallpaper closed the gap, waiting (and being eaten by bugs) until some house renovation fanatic like me would come along and decide that the only way properly to strip that baseboard was to pry it off the wall entirely.

I also found back there a few fragments of a previous wallpaper. Maybe the original? Allowing for yellowing over the years, it's not far off what I hope to put up myself, if the dollar-British pound exchange rate just would go back in my favor. Though in my opinion, my chosen William Morris leaf design is nicer than the geometric trellis style this paper seems to be.

Nice to think I'm keeping with the spirit of the place. And I hope Mrs. Moore wasn't too put out with not receiving her Christmas card from Kathryn McLaughlin that year.

(They probably blamed the long-suffering Post Office. When all that time--!)

What a Brick!

"Brick brik, n baked clay; a shaped block of baked clay, generally rectangular . . . ; a helpful, supportive, kind person (colloq)."

Yesterday, I saw my across-the-alley, in-the-process-of-becoming-former neighbor sitting in a plastic lawn chair at the head of his alley driveway.

"You're probably wondering why I'm sitting here like this. My car's been inspected, and I'm waiting for it to be brought back. They always miss the house, so here I am!"

We got to talking, and I admitted to my dumpster-driving foray of a week ago. He didn't mind, but "How did you ever get that picnic bench out?!" And offered me a look at his remaining theology books, in case I wanted any of them.

Pretty soon, the driver from the garage came with the car, and my neighbor got in-- I guess to drive around to the front. But before they did, I screwed up my nerve and asked, "Do you have any plans for that pile of bricks there? I could really use some to line my garden beds."

"Oh, a guy came by the other day and offered to buy some off me."

"Well, if there's any left over after he gets his, let me know how much you want for them."

"Oh, just come take them! You can have as many as you want!"

Wow, what a brick!

Couldn't do the job yesterday, but today I got my lawn cart over and from noon to about 4:30 PM I hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. And hauled bricks. And stacked bricks. . . .

You get the point. I definitely could sympathize with Gary at This Old Crackhouse, and I didn't even have to haul them upstairs to the roof!

I don't know if my neighbor had come to any agreement with the guy who'd offered to pay; if so, that party was out of luck. I cleaned out every brick that was whole and a small pile of those that weren't. And his wife supported my depredations this afternoon: "Oh, just get them out of here."
If I counted right, I hauled and stacked 252 whole bricks, most of which did not have mortar on them. Various colors, which is perfect; varying sizes, so I'll need to sort them to get a straight line on the edge to my long borders. The broken ones I'll figure out how to cut to go round the curves of the crape myrtle bed in the front yard.

As some kind of return, I brought back the little dumpster-dived outdoor table, since I saw it matched two wooden lounge chairs they hadn't chucked. Another neighbor had come by to get them, to pass on to yet another neighbor who just got a house with a yard and needed some furniture to go with it. Hey, let's keep the set together, eh? That particular X-leg table would have looked funny with my Adirondack chairs anyway.

After I finished hauling the bricks I needed (and more or less restacking the ones I didn't), I tried to return the favor by pruning the bushes they'd been stacked under. I found forsythia branches growing in and through the pile, and once or twice, sprouts were rooted in the bricks themselves! However, I may have overpruned one bush, mistaking it for a volunteer elm tree. Then I noticed that the whole shrub had leaves that looked the same as the scraggly branches I lopped out . . . Ouch. Looks a little, um, open on the bottom now.

Oh dear. Do I go pull the forelock and apologize? Or put a brave face on it and say, "Hey, I've opened it up and it'll have nice new growth in the spring?" Or just figure they won't care, since they're practically all moved into their new apartment anyway?

But I've got the bricks I need for at least one long border. And I have a question: What shrub is it anyway, that looks like a dwarf elm tree? And no, I can't recall what kind of or if it had any flowers last spring!

But I'm losing my neighbor. Who is a brick.

Stripping in Public

Heaven help us, the things we'll resort to.

Even stripping in public. With children present.

I mean, when you've got a 12' piece of baseboard trim and it won't make the turn on the basement steps, what are you going to do?

You put down the tarps and the papers, set up the sawhorses, and strip it on the back porch. With the three-year-old from next door standing on his back porch, yelling over the fence all about the "'Lympics!!" which he's been watching non-stop with his dad, seemingly ever since he was born.

Just the one piece done this evening. The light failed, and anyway, that baseboard's going nowhere till I glue the second cracked-off piece back on. Only have two sets of pipe clamps--and one pair of sawhorses--to my name.

Crape Myrtle Watch 080824

What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing, at first glance. All four of my crape myrtle bushes are in bloom. The one on the left is a little slow, but that can't be helped: the weather's been very cool here this summer, and crapes like it hot.

But look closer. The two light purply "New Orleans" minis up the slope on the right, they're fine. And in front of them, next to the steps, is the "Pixie White," blooming its fool head off.

Wait a minute. "Pixie White." Those flowers aren't white, they're a lurid shade of pink!

And to the left above the Siberian irises is the picotee "Bayou Marie." Except whatever it is, it isn't picotee. It's kind of a solid fuchsia.

Whatever it is I have in this bed, only half is what I ordered.

This is not good. Not good at all. I already spoke with and emailed to the people at Crapemyrtles.com in mid-June, to let them know about "Velma's Royal Delight" being dead, and they said they'd take care of it within a fortnight. But here it is the end of August, and I've heard and received nothing.

Damn, and now I have to call up and gripe about this. And I suppose I must, because the colors I have here clash, and the bush at the left is way too small.

Crapemyrtles.com has a wonderful selection and the cost per plant isn't high, but when the minimum order is six, maybe it's better to buy the individual plants you want from a nursery where you'd pay a little more but where they're more careful about what they send.

Window Wondering

One big historical renovation question on my mind the past year or more has been, How did the piano windows in my living room, dining room, and front hall originally operate? The metal replacement windows the POs-1 put in in the early 1990s just have the usual doublehung sash. They work well enough, but I know the originals would have been some kind of three-light single sash. And my wild, crazy, extravagant dream is to replace all the windows in the Sow's Ear eventually with double-glazed wood sash to match what would have been there in 1916.

(My practical justification is that some of the windows have seals that are leaking, metal pieces are falling off other windows, and I was left with no record of what brand they are or who installed them. Can't repair 'em. So replace 'em! Replace 'em all!

But I digress.)

For seven years I lived in a pre-War (I mean, World War I) apartment in Kansas City; it was the same Craftsman style as my house. One room, my study, had three-light windows on three walls, and they were single-hung. I don't mean two sashes where only one operates. I mean one single sash where when you raise it it disappears up into the wall above.

Gosh, I wish that's what was originally here. I wish it intensely.

But I consider my brick walls (the room in Kansas City was a frame annex to the brick building), and I perceive where the framing for the second floor must start, and I think no, there wouldn't be room above my piano windows.

Well, last night, early this morning, I was stripping the window sill from the piano window next to the fireplace, and I discovered this:

Does that look like the footprint of a hinge to you? Sure does to me.

And yes, there's two of them. And I've inspected all the other piano window stools, and they have the same paint residue in the same places, where I couldn't chip it off.

Hopper windows. That's what the house had. Inward-swinging hopper windows. You can even see the hole in the header where the bolt of the latch used to go.

And I've been checking the Van Dyke's Restorers' catalog, and I think I've located the type of surface-mounted hinge that might have been used.

I still need to get someone stronger than I to pop out the metal windows so I can look at the sill and jambs and figure out what I'd need to design in the way of stops and weatherstripping and things.

And I guess I need to decide how authentic and historical I want to be. Hopper windows make it hard to display anything on the window stools in the summer. Or on the bookcases sitting under them. Would I be willing to compromise on a three-over-one doublehung unit, for convenience' sake?

Happily, I don't need to worry about that right now. Too much else to do first.

Like go on stripping woodwork. Last night and this evening I disposed of nine more pieces, hooray, living room window and baseboard trim. If my count is right, that brings me to 62 out of 330, or 18.8%.

Noticed something on the baseboards while I was at it: Looks like somebody for some reason had the idea of shortening them. Two of the living room pieces I've done so far have this kerf in them. Whatever was behind it, they thought better of the plan.

Indecent Places

The banner motto on this blog is "I'll make a silk purse out of this house if it kills me."

And yeah, I've put a modicum of suffering into it . . . To the tune of refinisher-tanned fingers where the stripping gloves wear through . . . and lingering congestion when the ventilation isn't quite adequate to take away the fumes of a five-hour basement woodwork stripping session . . . and the occasional bruise or splinter when pieces of trim get out of hand when I'm prying them off the wall . . .

But "if it kills me"? That's just been something cute to say. Window dressing. I have not truly suffered for my renovation Art as so many of my houseblogs.net fellow travellers have. I have not lived with crevasses in my bedroom floor, or done the dishes in the bathtub for four months or gone to the bathroom in a coffee can while the toilet was waiting to be plumbed, or endured the other true hardships necessary to enter the kingdom of house renovation heaven. No, even while removing a piece of trim here, and stripping it there, I have endeavored to go on living a Civilized Life. I have had my books and music on their shelves where I can get at them. I've had my computer in my study, to take me whithersoever I will. I've got my piano in the front room. And if I don't feel like facing the state of the house, I can sit down and read or surf or play, and pretend everything is just fine.

But last week, when I moved the trim removal operation into the living room, the penny dropped: Silly hobbit! This isn't Civilized Places! I have to make the sacrifices everyone else does.

So the books on Art and Architecture History, the Church and General History Books, the beautiful tomes on ancient icons and Frank Lloyd Wright and medieval cathedrals, they all had to be packed up in boxes and stored in the guest bedroom until the trim is back on and refinished and the walls are repapered or painted. Can't get at the trim or the walls with a full bookcase in the way.

And the two other bookcases in the living room must undergo the same fate, as soon as I get more boxes. Ornaments and pictures and candlesticks have to be put safely away. And when the time comes, the furniture must be covered and moved aside. I've must to do what I have to do and live as I must live to get this job done.

. . . Of course, having thought of that saying of the famous philosopher Smeagol the Stoor, I had to follow the quotation to its source, to make sure I had it right. Which I didn't: It's actually "Silly! We're not in decent places!" And in the process of finding it, this past week and a half I've reread half of Tolkien's The Two Towers, and then of course I had to reread all of The Return of the King, and here we are again, alas! alas! fallen from the daily rigor that should be my path and my goal.

I've been very civilized these past few days, but from a house renovation perspective, not exactly decent!

Tools for the Job

Late this past Sunday afternoon I marched across the street to the neighbors'. I wonder what Mrs. Neighbor thought when she saw me standing at her door, 10" pry bar in hand.

"I was wondering, do you have a bigger pry bar than this?" I asked quickly, to forestall any dire impressions.

"Oh, yes! I'll send my husband over with it when he gets home."

But the afternoon, the evening, and the days went by, and no neighbor with large pry bar appeared.

Meanwhile, I've moved my trim removal labors into the living room, and there are baseboard pieces in there that I can't get off the wall by myself, with my present arsenal of tools. If I borrowed the neighbor's pry bar once, I'd have to keep borrowing it again and again and again.

Awkward.

Gotta get a pry bar with some decent leverage of my own. And get it cheap.

Which in my area, turns out not to be Lowe's or BigLots (that's just cheeep), but Hamilton Tool & Supply Company on Seventh Avenue in Beaver Falls. Yesterday afternoon, between dumpster-diving, I drove up and visited them for the first time.

This place is hilarious! It reminds me of my grandpa's and my dad's workshops taken to the nth power; the biggest toolbox in the world, multiplied and on steroids. An ancient Victorian building with a corner turret and floor upon floor, room after room of tools, tools, and more tools! Tools piled on shelves! Tools hanging on walls! Tools in file cabinets! Tools in boxes! Tools in bins! Tools in desk drawers! Used tools! New tools! Antique tools! Gigantic tools! Tiny tools! Tools power and mechanical! Tools beyond imagining! Sensoree obberlode, ai haz it!

Having told him what I needed, the clerk took me up two or three flights and back into the bowels of the building. There I was allowed to rummage through a veritable haymow of prybars of all sizes and descriptions. I tried the heft, the pulling angle, and the splay of end on several, and settled for two, one used and one new, that should do the job. $5 and $7, cheap.

Then the clerk escorted me down a floor to find a plaster spatula/putty knife. I needed a nice wide one to put between the wall and the woodwork, to stop the pry bar leaving marks in the back of the trim. This collection was in the bottom drawer of a metal four-drawer file. Hey, it makes for low overhead, what? $1, used.

Truly, as the Hamilton clerk said on the phone when I called, happiness is a good selection of pry bars. The newer-model one I got made short work of the living room baseboard pieces I started on Wednesday and couldn't get loose.

And of the trim around the piano window to the right of the living room fireplace. (Funny, when I first moved in, I thought that was the first trim I was going to strip and refinish. That was nearly five years ago. Funny.)

It also enabled me to pry the 12' baseboard the rest of the way off the north wall of the dining room . . . unfortunately, the piece was a tight fit on the left, ran into the resheetrocked wall a good two inches at the right, and was cracked at both ends. And the hole I'd made in the east wall sheetrock didn't give it room enough.

Yeah, the cracks kept going. All the way. Both ends.

Hooboy! More gluing to do! In a perfect world, I'd use biscuits to join the pieces together. In a perfect world, I'd have whatever machine it takes to make the slots. Will I go back to Beaver Falls to see if Hamilton's has one?

No, don't think so. Not now. For this, I probably can get away with clamps and then reinforcing the joints with those squiggly metal fasteners. But it's nice to think they might have a biscuit slot machine, if I needed one!