Late Victorian house, is it a folk victorian?

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Permalink Reply by Martin on May 12, 2009 at 2:25am

OK guys I did more work today, and actually got some stuff done. It will be a lot easier when I get a website going to document everything.

Anyway, the flat roofs have been sealed, so hopefully the MAJOR water leakage has been taken care of for now. I will most likely put on a rubber roof where the flat roofs are before I do any major resto work on the interior. From the looks of things, any leaks in the metal gutters were "fixed" by putting CAULK into the pinholes!!! So once I find a lift, we will fix the metal gutters and line them with some kind of rubber. Then we will fix the flashing issues... clear the clogged downspouts, and put up downspouts that are missing.

I cut a lot of the trees back of the side of the house so it doesn't look like a run down vacant house so much now. I was quite pleased. We decided to pull the bead board off the kitchen walls so we can redo the walls correctly. We uncovered about 10 layers of paint, old wall paper, a shadow line of where the old base moulding used to be, and some plaster over the brick that needs attention. We also found out we will not be able to push the fake wall back at all. I guess they built it the way they did because the living room chimney also kicks out into the kitchen over a wide area :( After my wife peeled some of the paint off the wood around the windows, the original shellac was there.. so all that will be stripped and redone.

Some of the carpet was pulled up (smelt like cat pee anyway, and we are redoing all the floors). The upstairs hallway has always been painted, and is still painted. I found a hatch to where one would turn on the gas light in the foyer. The floors aren't in bad shape.

My wife was able to work on getting the "newer" painted wall paper off the stairway walls to get to the first layer of wallpaper. It is a really nice slate blue pattern with some fancy details. I tried to take a picture of it but the camera died, so only a few picts to post for today. The cove green part of the foyer ceiling and parlor ceiling.. at first.. thought it was added more recently since it was made of a carboard material. Come to find out, it is ORIGINAL to the house! The first layer of wall paper is on it, and behind that carboard stuff is some cloth. It is hard to explain and I will go into detail at a later date. I should be able to pull some nice wallpaper samples off that area since they didn't get wet. I guess instead of using plaster or tin to make that cove design, they did it on a budget when the house was new :)

So I hope to go down there again tomorrow and do more scraping. I keep finding more and more about this place.. it is pretty cool :) Enjoy the picts!

Kitchen before board removal

kitchen as it stands now.. notice wood work that I scraped about 10 layers off without really trying. The black area at the bottom is where baseboard used to be.

Since the camera died I didn't get to take pictures but will the next time I go down there.

Permalink Reply by Martin on May 17, 2009 at 3:54pm

Well we have most of the old paint stripped off the kitchen walls. All the walls have plaster directly over brick. The plaster for the most part is in good shape, except under the windows. I guess water comming in over time will do that. The kitchen was a dark mustard yellow originally, then a bright yellow, then a light blue. After that, someone skimed the walls with a spackle paste... and there was about 5-7 layers of other paint. But all and all things are looking better already in there. I think we are going to put the new bathroom over the kitchen. I would rather messed up the painted floor up there than the other room we first considered. Also if we had to tear out the kitchen ceiling, it wouldn't bother me since it was already dropped a couple inches and needs to be redone. I found out that there used to be a door on the back staircase.. but it was about 3 stairs up. I thought that was kind of strange. Also, they put this flooring down in the foyer.. and the board under it was stapled to the nice unfinished wideplank floor!! There are still some mysteries that need to be solved. Power will be turned on tomorrow (at least for temporary power) and the plumbing to the half bath should be done as well this week. So more to come. I will take more pictures as well.I am going to have a hard time finding the 3 doors that are missing as well as a set of pocket doors. The pattern doesn't seem very common.

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Permalink Reply by Me on June 15, 2009 at 6:42pm

Hi. I read through your messages and saw that you had talked about posting a floor plan. Is there one available? I would be very interested to see the room layouts. I have a house that is almost identical in design from the exterior. The only major difference that I can tell is that the left side wing of my house looks to be a few feet longer. I also have some additional rooms against the back of the house that are not present on your house. The main layout is far too close to be coincidence and leads me to believe that the builders of your house and the builders of mine were using the same basic plans. From what I can tell from your pictures the interior layout is somewhat different. Also I have no fireplaces and instead have windows where you have chimneys. My house was built in 1910. I believe that to be a very accurate date verified by markings within the house and by entries in the property abstract.

Let me know if you have a floorplan available.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Martin on June 15, 2009 at 10:27pm

sure I can scan them if you are interested. I would have to make a rough one up if that is ok. I haven't made any accurate measurements yet of the house, so I can't build one using Auto Cad. Send me a private message and I can send you a floor plan.

Do you have any picutres of your house? I do know that my house was built around 1895-1900 due to the evidence I have found so far. Maybe mine is an earlier version of your house? Is you house in Ohio as well???

I would be very interested if we could do a picture swap!!! Send me a PM when you can.

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Permalink Reply by Martin on October 11, 2009 at 6:36pm

Well it has been awhile since I did any update. So here is goes for all those interested...

The house is solid brick.. for sure. The walls are 3 bricks thick, and there is an airspace between the interior brick and a layer of exterior bricks. The joists are tied in directly to the brick. I had to take the kitchen ceiling out (VERY painful to do so) to run plumbing to the new upstairs bathroom. I can see the joists going into the brick walls.Most of the water leaks are fixed. I have been lining the gutters with rubber roofing, and it has worked out well. Nobody has ever fixed the gutters properly (just filled holes with caulk). The rubber roofing seems to be working great. But I am running out of good weather, so I will fix what I can before it gets WAY TOOO COLD.The foundation is limestone (I think), along with field stones in the basement. The foundation is about 22 inches thick. I had to bore a few holes to run new electrical and put a hole in to run lines out to a new heat pump which is going to be put in :) The house had electrical added sometime during the turn of the century. All the old gas lines are still poking out everywhere (but not hooked up). Also there was some kind of coal furnace in the basement. When taking off some of the wallpaper by the vents, you could see the coal dust still on the plaster. I have lots of pictures if anyone is interested. I have been putting a LOT of work into it so far. I still have not moved in yet, but will be moved in by Nov. It may be kind of unfomfortable, but we will be happy :)

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Permalink Reply by Donald Shore on October 31, 2009 at 8:41pm

Congratulations on the progress.

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Permalink Reply by Martin on October 31, 2009 at 11:13pm

Thanks! We were able to tear down the old garage this past weekend. I couldn't believe that the original brick floor to the stable still existed under about 18 inches of concrete! I think there were 3 or 4 different layers of floor, and the garage was made into a 2 car garage in the 40s. At that time they tore down the stable or smaller garage, and made the new one from cement block. I was even able to recover some relics that were under the garage floor, and also found out that I have a brick driveway that was buried from under 6 inches of dirt!

Other than that, we got a new 5 ton heat pump put in, 300 amp service, new plumbing started, lights in the basement, 3/4 of the built in gutters lined with rubber roofing, and all kinds of other stuff.. One thing I hope not to do again anytime soon is bring a cast iron 5 ft clawfoot tub up the stairs (the ones in my pictures) to the second floor again. :)

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