Kelly Spitzer

Protected: Family News: June 2008

kelly — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:57:35 +0000

Demo Time!

kelly — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:17:15 +0000

Here are a few shots from our current projects: the living room, the kitchen, and the cantilever (built to expand the dining area).

The living room after removing the old sheetrock, which someone had hung in double layers with few screws. And why the spotty insulation??

The kitchen after demolition.

An electrical junction box found in the kitchen. Someone filled it with drywall mud instead of putting on a metal cover. Wtf?

Brian and Jake pushed over the old dining area wall (literally) to make way for the addition.

Pictures of our (more) finished projects to come.

Strrretttch

kelly — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:27:32 +0000

Laundry Room

kelly — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:24:03 +0000

This first picture is of the laundry room right after we started its addition. As you can see, it was half the size or less, which made it just big enough for a stacked washer and dryer and a freezer, or a side by side washer and dryer, had cracked and uneven concrete floors, a dangerous electrical panel and overall electrical situation, and a large single-paned funky window along the back wall (which isn’t visible in this picture, as the addition took over). Charmless. No. UGLY. And borderline useless.

Here’s what we did with it:

As you can see, we evened out the floor, put a new subfloor down, redid the entire electrical panel, as well as the wiring throughout the house, new windows, sheetrock, insulation, well, you get the idea…

This is our new slate tile floor. One thing you should know about slate–it’s not for perfectionists. It’s natural, which means the thickness of each tile differs (you can even it out to an extent with mortar, but still…), and you will have flaking. But it’s gorgeous, and you often find fossils in it!

Brian putting on trim.

New sink and cabinet. Brian built the cabinet. Oh, and the stainless countertop, too.

See this little door in the side? The cat’s litter box is in here. She rarely uses it (she’s an outdoor kind of girl) but in case of emergency…

Brian made this upper cabinet, too.

A nice big folding table on top of the washer and dryer.

New lighting.

As it looks now. We plan to buy a bench to put across from the door, which you can’t really see in this picture. (It’s on the right, right where the picture cuts off.) That way, we can come inside and sit while we take off our shoes.

Master Bath in all its (almost) final glory

kelly — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:20:26 +0000

We moved into our addition in early June and I haven’t updated our progress since then. I hope to do that in the following weeks, but for now, take a look at our master bath in its (almost) finished stage. What’s left to do? Sew the curtains and order glass for the shower. Now, onto the picture show…

My Office

kelly — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:41:06 +0000

My office as it looked when we moved in. April 2003. Pretty ugly, huh? Flat ceiling, too dark floors, no charm.

Well lookee now! I insisted on opening up the ceiling and exposing the collar ties. Brian was against it. Too much work, he said. But stubbornness on my part won out. We added a sky light–southeast facing–which brightens up the room all day long, redid the floors, tore out the old baseboard heating because we now have a heat pump with air conditioning!, installed new trim in the Arts and Crafts/Mission style, put in new access doors (for the heat pump), and Brian made built-in oak bookshelves. One on each side of the room roll out for attic access. Oh, and we added a closet, because this room didn’t have one. Oh! And new lighting, and a new door! Whew. We also insulated and… can I just say we did EVERYTHING!! Okay. We did everything. Here are the pics.

Floors

kelly — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:33:41 +0000

They’re in, and refinished! Which means we’re that much closer to moving into our new master suite! It also means that I will soon have a real office again…

We had quite a time with these floors. The original flooring upstairs was old-growth fir, and when we built the addition, we struggled with whether or not to try and match it, or go for something different. Once we started checking into prices, it didn’t look very feasible to purchase old-growth fir. What little exists is very expensive. But I didn’t want two different woods, so it was either pull them all up, or match it. Eventually, we found a miller who had several old-growth trees that he pulled out of the mud flows from the 1980 Mt. St. Helen’s eruption. He quoted us a good price, and we accepted. We knew they wouldn’t match exactly, especially since the old floors looked pretty rough, but the tones, and to a certain extent, the grain, would be close enough. Having come out of the mud flows, the new floors have some purple to them, and, according to the miller, they are much harder than most fir. So, let’s get started on a picture tour, shall we?

The office, after sanding off the old walnut-colored stain:

With all that dark color gone, it took away the bowling alley lane effect. The room felt much wider instead of long and narrow.

Finished. We used a natural oil-based sealer, but no stain. Look at the nice warm glow the oil-based sealer adds. Water-based, though less stinky, doesn’t do this. It washes it out. Bad news.

Now, onto the master bedroom…

Here they are laid. Talk about back-breaking work.

Here’s a close up of the purple tones:

This is Jake and Brian sanding them. Luckily, I got spared a lot of this dusty work, though not all. The sander we rented wasn’t so bad, because it had a vacuum attached to it, but using the orbital around the edges was just gross.

And the finished product… Ta-Da!

They look a lot better than the old ones, clearly, but considering the abuse the old floors had gotten, I can’t complain with how they turned out.

And as cool as the floors are, I have to say, the stairs and landing area is really something. Since the downstairs is all oak flooring (I know… doesn’t make any sense, but who wants to rip out and start all over? and spend even more money?) we used oak for the stair treads and bench seat at the top of them. We’re going to tie the entire area in with some fir wainscotting. It should look pretty cool when it’s all done. But for now, check this out:

The landing:

The bench seat at the top of the stairs:

And the stairs themselves…

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Origins

kelly — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:03:39 +0000

When we bought our house, the real estate ads, the bank, the county, everyone, had our house listed as built in 1940. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but the more I learned about architecture, and styles, and the history of Centralia, the more that date didn’t seem right to me. Our house looked like a Craftsman. A very simply put together one, a not quite genuine one, maybe, but Craftsmanesque, nonetheless. Which would date it, most likely, between 1910 and 1930. So, I was stuck trying to figure out why our house looked older, but belonged to a younger decade. Nothing about it made sense.

When we started remodeling, we found even more surprises: a door framed in a bedroom which opened up ten, maybe fifteen feet, in front of the neighbor’s; a thick cedar beam around the entire perimeter; and balloon framing, among other things.

Checking the country records, we found out that the neighbor’s house that door was facing was built in 1930. So, if our house wasn’t built until ten years later, why would they put a door there?

The thick cedar beam around the perimeter indicated that the house was once on a post and beam foundation, not the current cinder block one, which, again, made it seem older than 1940.

And the balloon framing… sure, they might have used it occasionally during that time period, but it was popular much earlier.

So many questions. And only one answer: 1940.

But what did we know anyway?

Then, in the summer of 2006, as we were working outside, a man in a pick-up stopped and asked if we lived there. Well, yes, we said, we’re the owners. Did you know your house used to be the carriage house for the house up on the hill? he asked, and pointed to the huge, ancient run-down Victorian in back of us. It was moved down, flipped around, and turned into a residence in 1936, he continued. My grandmother has a picture of her standing in front of it. She was friends with the daughter of the people who owned it. You know it was in the Washington family, don’t you?

(House on hill)

Uh, no, we did not know. The earliest owner we knew about was an elderly lady named Mrs. Sibley, who moved out sometime in the late nineteen eighties or early nineties, and the house had seen two owners since then. The county had no prior records, and there was certainly no mention of the house ever belonging to anyone in the Washington family, whose namesake, George Washington, (not THE George Washington, President of the United States, but a black man who left the mid-west to escape discrimination and find a better life) founded Centralia.

I’m sure you can find records at the library, the man suggested.

So Brian and I spent hours at the library trying to find evidence that what this man said was true. But there was nothing. It made sense that our house had at one time been a carriage house, however, and that it was probably moved to where it now sits from another location. The construction of it at least made that likely. As for everything else, the man said, well, we weren’t buying it. We wanted to, believe me, but we wanted proof.

When we replaced the siding on the front of the house we found further evidence of its origins as a carriage house. It was clear that barn doors once adorned the side facing the street. Where they were removed, different siding covers the hole.

I started thinking that perhaps our former carriage house was moved to its present location in 1940, or at least converted into a residence at that time, which would explain the county’s records. Then, in the fall, we were visited by the assessor. While he was taking measurements of our addition, I told him the rumors I’d heard regarding our house. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was moved down here, he said. A lot of these houses were. What about your records, I asked? They say this place was built, or converted, in 1940. But it looks older than that. It does, he agreed, then went on to say that the county lost every single one of their records in a fire in the early 1930s. It took them about ten years to revisit every house in town, and when they did, they approximated the age of the residence.

Now we had confirmation that our house was more than likely built prior to 1940, even prior to 1930, and that it was likely a carriage house that had been moved. But what of the rumors regarding George Washington? Did we dare believe that our house had once been property of Centralia’s founder?

We may be one step closer in discovering the truth. A few months ago, the neighbors came over to help us lift the truck topper onto the back of the truck. While they were here, we gave them a tour of our renovations. It was during that tour that the son told us he remembered reading an article in the town’s newspaper about our street, how George Washington owned a large house around the corner, and had buried gold in his carriage house. The gold has never been found.

Whether we live in George Washington’s former carriage house or not, we will continue to look for the truth. And that gold…

Building a Concrete Countertop

kelly — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 18:15:10 +0000

First step: the mold. Exact measurements are crucial. And be sure to build the mold with smooth material, unless you want lines, grooves, texture, etc. to show up in the concrete. We used a melanine board. Here’s the mold in its basic shape and early stages. You can see where the sinks will sit. The blue tape is to keep caulking from contaminating the the top of the mold. Stain does not penetrate the caulking… But you need caulking to seal around the sinks, so water doesn’t leak out of the concrete. Most sources suggest you use black caulking, and we did, because, I believe, it’s less visible if it does come into contact with your concrete. A good resource to consult is Concrete Countertops by Fu-Tung Cheng. Also, make several sample pieces to test stain colors on.

The next step is to add your faucet knock-outs. Then you add rebar and remesh. The technical details are numerous, so again, please consult a reference book. The end result looks something like this:

And now you’re ready to mix and pour your concrete. We used Quickrete 5000 concrete, bagged, because it came pre-mixed with aggregate, portland cement, and fibers, and we had a small project. We also added Counter-flo, which reduces water content. Find a specialty concrete store for such items. Places like Home Depot don’t cut it. Especially when it comes to stain… Once the concrete is poured, you need to vibrate it from the underside, and the sides, of the mold, to release the air bubbles. (Picture 2 below.) Rent a cordless vibrator for best results, or use a combination of a palm sander (sans sandpaper), a reciprocating saw, with blade removed, and a hammer.

Once your concrete has cured, remove the sink molds and the faucet knock-outs. Flip it over, and see what you’ve got. And that’s the scary part. You can run into a myriad of problems in the process. Efflorescence, water discoloration, ghosting, cracking, holes. Luckily, most of them are fixable, and defects add character. We found a lot of small holes in ours, probably because the mixture was too dry. A simple slurry mix easily fixes this problem, and adds, in my opinion, a more stone-like appearance once it’s stained. Some people even add defects like this intentionally, to get this apperance. If the holes are very large, use an epoxy.

We sanded it before and after adding the slurry.

Once you’re satisfied with what you’ve got, let the slurry cure. In the meantime, play with your stain on your sample pieces. Go to a specialty store, or order online, because, again, Home Depot-like products just don’t cut it. You want the good stuff. Staining is a process. You have to apply the stain, neutralize it, and rinse it off, over a period of several days. It’s best to do this outside, for obvious reasons. When you first apply the stain, it often looks a totally different color than what it should end up as. And once it dried, it really doesn’t look very good. Neutralizing and rinsing it brings out the true color. Once you’ve got what you want, move onto your countertop. We added a wet look laquer to ours. This isn’t often recommended for places like the kitchen, however.

Not too bad for our first concrete countertop project, is it? Well, okay, I think it’s breathtakingly beautiful, but I’m biased.

More Finishing Touches

kelly — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:47:36 +0000

How many finishing touches can there possibly be in a house? I don’t know. Are we done yet. No. But the master bath is really close. I say that, but there is still window trim to finish (it’s all cut; the paint is drying) as well as trim around the door and floor. There is the concrete countertop to polish and stain (but it’s poured!), and the sink cabinet to build. Oh, and the built in closet dresser/wardrobe thing. Oh, and glass to order for the shower. It never ends. That, I can promise you.

Lights in Dormer. There are two–one on each side of the window.

Tub Shelf

Medicine Cabinets