What's worse than termites?

I was sitting quietly on the couch when I heard a buzzing. I thought it was a large horsefly. I heard it BANG into one of the french doors in the dining room before it found a path straight for my head.

I thought "Wow! That's a huge bumble bee" and I managed to trap it.

Here it is in a little container before Jeff released it back outside. Its a little blurry, but you can see how big it is compared to his hands. Its almost as long as the top section of his thumb.

Later we wondered what it was doing in our house and some google searching led us to believe that its something called a Carpenter Bee and that it was in our house because it likes to eat wood.
If I see another one of these any time soon, we might be selling the house in short order.

TERMITES!

Recent instant messenger exchange between the authors of SOABT

Jessie: I think you should update the blog about the termites.I have nothing to say that doesn't include how grumpy and pregnant I am. No one is going to want to read that
Jeffrey: here's what I want to write:
Jeffrey: Title: TERMITES!
Jeffrey: Blog: TERMITES! WE HAVE F-ING TERMITES!!! I HATE THIS HOUSE
Jeffrey: The End
Jessie: Fine. I'll write about the termites.




As part of the kitchen project we've included insulating / air-sealing the "Cold Room" in the basement. A little tip to anyone who's buying a house, open the fuse box and see how things are labeled. We looked at the house in the late summer and purchased in early fall. The house wasn't very cold in August, however on the fuse box there's a room labeled "Cold Room". I've never seen a fuse labeled more correctly. This section of the basement was previously uninsulated, walls and ceiling, and mostly covered with just barn board.

Jeff started in on the demo of the "Cold Room" to prepare for the Icynene installation with his trusty Fubar. It wasn't long before The House threw another surprise at us.


The sill between the foundation and the vertical studs holding up one wall of the house crumbled away and the majority of 3 of the studs had vanished. A frantic trip to the lumber store ensued to buy new supports to shore up the wall of our house.

We followed this up with a liberal application of Bora Care to make the house unattractive to termites in the future.

The depressing part about this: examination of another wall showed that there was also termite damage, but a previous owner had already repaired it. I don't recall anything in the seller's disclosure about termite damage...
Since my time machine is in the shop, I have no way to know if we would have bought the house knowing about termite damage, but I wish we'd known 3 years ago to start looking for it. I wonder how much damage we could have stopped just in that time.

Powder Room Disaster, Part 2

Pictures of the finished bathroom, before disaster struck





The sewer pipe from the 2nd floor bathroom had cracked somewhere between the basement and the floor of the guest bathroom, rendering the guest bath and the 2nd-floor washer-dryer useless. Jeff had to cut open the wall to expose the pipe so the plumber could replace it. Here's a close-up of the disgusting 4 foot crack in the cast iron pipe.

This is what the bathroom currently looks like with the replacement PVC pipe in place. When we have the plaster in to finish the kitchen wall, we'll have him fix this too. This picture does show off Jeff's tile work on the shower surround, and our friend David is peeking out of his picture on the lower-left.

Just when you think you have a project completed, this house always throws a curve at us.

Powder Room, Part 1

Our downstairs bathroom just off the kitchen is actually a full bath, although we have never bathed in that shower. When we moved in, it was painted lavender topping cheerful yellow wall tiles and small wood tiles in a parquet design. The vanity was a square thing, painted many times and showing water damage near where the sides met the floor. The room is pretty small and the door didn't swing open all the way, but bumped into the vanity causing the occupant to squeeze around the commode to enter and exit the room.

We started the re-do last spring, and it took us much longer than we expected, due to some surprises along the way. Jeff chipped off all the yellow 4x4 wall tiles and found some kind of vinyl wall covering. Under that was bead board, nice old inch-thick boards covered in mold. Out they went. Under the bead board was the outside wall of the house. No insulation. In fact, if you bent down and looked up through the horizontal siding, you could see daylight streaming through. That explained why the bathroom was always so cold!

After adding insulation, Jeff put up cement backerboard and then surrounded the tub with white subway tiles. The rest of the room had been covered in white faux-wood wall panelling and painted, so that was replaced with beadboard.

We also added a small toilet, pedestal sink, bamboo flooring, we splurged a little on a bamboo-styled faucet to match the flooring. After consulting the Pottery Barn catalog for a pleasing Benjamin Moore paint sample (why reinvent the wheel?), the room was patched, plastered, and painted Silvery Blue (1647) and finally completed. A mere 8 months after we started.

To our credit, in addition to the doing all the demo and renovation ourselves, Jeff also moved the plumbing, rewired a light, and installed a water shutoff valve that didn't cause the entire house to be shut down. This was a little beyond the "update" we originally envisioned and morped into a true renovation.

Which is why the words "Honey, why is it raining in the basement?" brought that familiar sagging feeling when Jeff uttered the question 2 days before Christmas.

To be continued...

Leaking Foundation Part 2

I had been checking on the leak over the past 3 weeks to see how successful I was. Everything was going well until today. We'd received about 4" of snow, followed by rain. This was the same recipe that caused me to discover the issue. My water bucket that I had placed under the "repair" was plus 2.5 gallons. I knew this was going to happen, I patched it while it was still dripping, not the best idea. However, at the time of this inspection no water was dripping. I've mix up another batch of quikrete to finish the job.

Divided Hub

No, I'm not referring to Boston after the pike was extended to Logan. I'm talking about the brand name we found on the door locks in our house.

Several of the bedroom door locks/latches are tempermental and don't actually close the door, requiring guests to wedge a shoe under the guestroom door when they need privacy.

Jeff got motivated to scrape off several layers of (probably lead) paint from the door hardware and removed the mechanisms. Its pretty interesting to see how these door knobs work with a few moving levers and a spring.

Lock - before

The lock part was painted shut and the paint drips had been interfering with the way the knob turned. Thanks to something I read in a house magazine, we repurposed an old Crock-pot to soak off the old paint and layers of grease overnight. Note- if you do this, you can NEVER use the crock-pot again for food. Since I think we'll be doing more of this in the future, I didn't mind dedicating a pot to the project.

We covered the pieces in water, and set the heat to medium and let it "cook" overnight for about 18 hours. In the morning, Jeff had to apply a little elbow grease, but the paint came off pretty easily.

Once the paint was off, Jeff sprayed each piece with WD-40 and polished them up to remove any stuck-on grime, and then using the "before" photos as reference, reassembled the locks. It was pretty easy, and now our guests won't need to use their shoes as a door stop!

Here's a close up of the assembled lock casing, the text reads "Divided Hub June 11, 61". I think this must refer to 1861, making these the original door handles/locks on the house.

Divided hub

So, friends and family, its now safe to visit again!

Leaking Foundation

The experience of the old home continues. Snow turned to rain before finally settling on ice. I'm not sure of the physics behind it, but as I wandered into my basement for my post rain check of the basement I noticed a lot more water then usual in the "wet locations". My usual practice is to shop-vac any puddles that violate the 1/3 rule. This rule is, if the puddle extends more the 1/3 of the space between the walls, I'll clean it up immediately, anything less I make a judgment call on my mood about the house that day. I vacuumed the 4 gallons and went to work.

After such days of rain and subsequent vac I check the spots again once I arrive home. This one particular location, was almost to my 1/3 line. I vacuumed again and tried to see where the water was coming from. I managed to follow it all the way back main water line coming through the fieldstone foundation.



The leak didn't seem like much, so I put a 2.5 gallon bucket under the drip. The house frustration was full for the day, up to the comfort of my family.

The following day I contact my savior and renovation consultant, Jon. I explained what was happening and some simple hydraulic cement should do the trick. Many hours later of researching such a wonderful product, Offspring #1 and I wander off to Lowes to grab a bucket.

More later..