Category: Uncategorized

I’d been thinking about what Justin B. said to me some time ago and he restated it again when I emailed him yesterday in response to his mass “we’re OK” email. He said that you don’t know if your house really has good bones until you’ve gone through your crawlspace and looked at them. Basically, the line ‘these houses have good bones’ is a crock unless those bones have been examined. Don’t assume that just because your house has been standing for 100 years it isn’t itching to self destruct in the next few years.
I’m now afraid to get calls from my contractor. I swear every time he calls, he’s telling me he’s found some fresh new horror. And we’re just starting. Yesterday’s find was more missing brick behind drywall. He’s amazed at how whoever did it chose to hide the problems rather than fix them. Then later he says we need to ‘talk’ about the windows.
I just wanted to move the bathrooms around. Maybe have a nice wood floor, that’s all. Some insulation here. A new door there, and I’m done. Instead I’m addressing whatever emergency endangering the structure of the house because in the 130 years the blasted thing has been standing, it hasn’t occurred to anyone to do more than the odd crappy patch job. Bathroom floor rotting? Cover it with tile! Massive hole in walls? Cover with drywall! Sagging joists? Water damage? Cracked plaster? Hide ’em all with drywall.
Yeah, I’m bitter.

The contractor is concerned about the party walls. I’m not too keen on them either, as it seems I could remove the mortar with a toothbrush it’s so sandy. The walls won’t be a problem he guessed in the next 20-30 years. But after that, who knows. How the heck do you fix a wall you share?
I really don’t believe this house was built that well to start with. There have been a couple of problems I found that I’m not sharing on the blog, for various reasons, that relate to the fact that mine was built for poor laborers by a single landlord. There were shortcuts made evident when walls were exposed. There are other things that make me wonder if the 1870ish landlord got these houses built fast and cheap.

On an intellectual level I knew he was going to take out the walls and investigate what was up with my house. I was not prepared on an emotional level for what I saw. Now the contractor was as giddy as a schoolgirl and very proud of the work done, when showing me the results. Work, that seems to me went a little, ok very overboard.
Weren’t we keeping the plaster, and that other thing, and what the hell did you do with my ceiling?
On an intellectual level I see the importance of taking out the drywall of a wall. A wall that was hiding the fact that the upper portion of my stairs were not supported by anything. Sort of like the hole in the wall that wasn’t supported. You can see the hole, or better the chunk of wall ready to fall through the floor, in the back of the room near the doorway. There was other crap hidden under stuff, like the bathroom floor was near rotted.
On an emotional level. Different story. Which is why my renovation eye-witness may be spotty in the future. What I felt standing alone in a gutted room I was not prepared for the weight of all that just happened and what is to be, sinking in. That and the sound of the wall chunk shifting.
I just don’t want to see my house until it is in a more hopeful state. I don’t think I want to even go near it, but I have to because the mail forwarding hasn’t kicked in yet.

Well I was planning on a whole angst-ridden piece about what kind of floors I was looking to put in for Friday’s posting. The problem or the source of angst was one of the moral quandaries I had with my choice of flooring. I thought I was being all good and wonderful by choosing bamboo flooring. Then I read a Treehugger article about how bamboo is filled with formaldehyde, made under poor working conditions, isn’t local and thus requires a fair amount energy to get to the East coast, etc, etc, etc. And despite my desire to do right and and go for the more expensive cleaner (working conditions, older farms that don’t deforest, etc) bamboo flooring, I just can’t afford it. And there is a lot I can’t afford, where doing the right thing just falls to the wayside because simply put, I don’t have the money for it, particularly when crap like the hole in the wall appears, sucking money from one thing to fix this other thing. Good Lord knows what else I may find that is a budget killer.
Well the floors may be a non-issue. Apparently, I have some heart pine floors. Heart pine, that can be kept, buffed up and made nice. Maybe. It was a small portion of the floor. When the whole of the floor has been revealed, then maybe, hopefully, keep your fingers crossed & pray, the whole thing will be worth saving and I don’t have to worry about bamboo floors. If not, maybe maple from the USA.