Victorian Farmhouse - Reinstalling the Floor

This post covers days 11 to 14 (April 17, 18, May 14, 21). There was a bit of a break in the work due to Mother's Day as well as a weekend off, and scheduling and availability issues.

On days 11 and 12, not a whole lot was done on the house. We did some more demolition (removing the tongue-and-groove under the electrical panel, as well as removing some more of the non-matching mouldings). More work was done on electrical, and a lot of times was spent troubleshooting a connection in the junction box controlling the 3-way switch to the main staircase (the one in the attic).

Here are some photos of the skim-coated walls after they had dried.









Here's the old wallpaper found under the non-matching mouldings on the living room side. It's a similar hand-printed wallpaper to the pink ones on the reverse. It dates to AT LEAST the early 1920s, but it's probably much older than that.



I like the colours in this one. Off white, green, dark pink...









So after the long break (3 weeks?) I was told that there were some... developments... that happened while I was away, and that I probably wouldn't be too happy about them. Apparently while we were gone, and with NO ONE ASKING ANY OF US, the "foundation guy" convinced the parents that the boards we pulled-up from the floor should be planed down rather than be sanded in place. The guy claimed that these kinds of floors can't be sanded with a normal floor sander, which is complete b/s and makes absolutely no sense. This guy has worked on historic homes, so I guess the parents didn't question him too much, but I would NEVER EVER have run them through a planer*. So anyhow, all the boards were given a light pass through a planer, and when Angie found out what they did, she had a complete freak-out and meltdown (and I don't blame her one bit). Apparently there was a lot of screaming and cursing involved. I only found out about all of this on the car ride up to the house.

So yeah, not only did they plane the boards, but apparently all my carefully marked and numbered stickers got messed up because they started planing them not even bothering to check anything. This is the part that irritates me the most, since the floor HAD to be re-laid in exactly the same way (because of heating vents, and warped areas), and the numbers were largely the only indication of how to reinstall them correctly.

So yeah, I wasn't thrilled. They also "goofed" a few of them by passing them upside down, so a few were now too thin on the bottom, which gave us a lot of trouble.

The new roof was also installed when I saw the house after the break.





The rotted beam under the window was also patched (the one where you could see outside).



Angie's father also fixed the top of the chimney.



There were numerous different tulips in the side bed.



So yeah, the floor. I was definitely not happy about the whole numbering issue (most had thankfully been re-labeled correctly, but a few had question marks on them), and I was really not happy that the planer seems to have really raised a lot of flakes and coarse texture in the boards. It also ripped out and ate a number of the knots in the boards, leaving us with a bunch of large holes. The guy must have really messed-up his planer knives, too, because at least 3 or 4 huge nails were hit (we removed all the ones we could, but didn't worry too much about them, since they weren't supposed to be passing through a planer!)

Re-laying the floor was kind of grueling. I think we had about 3 boards out of 16 lengths that went in really easily. Most of the others went in very painstakingly. We had to use a combination of tapping with hammers (against blocks), pulling, pushing, and using large 4 foot pipe clamps that I brought for the purpose.



The whole pile of planed boards...



Here's how I squared-up the living room archway flooring. If you recall from the last post, this flooring edge was really crooked. We wanted a nice clean transition, so I screwed a piece of thin plywood along the archway (passing the screws in between floor boards to avoid making visible holes), and then I used a router with a flush-cut bit (3/4") mounted in it. The plywood serves as the straight-edge for the base plate of the router. This works really well, but it makes a LOT of dust.

The ends were cut with the multi-tool.



The flooring on this part appears to be solid maple, and 1 1/4" thick, so I had to do multiple passes. You can see what's being cut off.





Each board took at least 1/2 hour to install.



Another issue that came up was that the foundation guy was SUPPOSED to come by and fix the edge of the foundation for us. There were 2 or 3 high spots along the front wall, and holes to be filled along the side wall. Well, apparently we were told that the foundation guy came and fixed it, but it was quite apparent that it was Angie's father who did the quick fix himself using regular cement instead of lime mortar. All the holes along the side wall had also not been filled-in at all.

To add to the disappointment, the patch he hid was about an inch too high across most of the patch. The poor guy meant well, but it ended up making a lot more work for us. Pierre and I spent a good 2 hours chipping away all the top inch of cement, and then filling-in all the holes in the side wall with crushed gravel and sand (not ideal, but better than nothing).





The new beam repair (to replace the rotted section) was also not deep enough, and not the same height, so we had to redo all of our shims and blocks along the edge, which ate-up even more time.



Installing 3/4 of the floor (what you see below) took the entire day. Because of all the screwed-up boards, several of them had to be shimmed on the bottom, and a bunch were very difficult to slip back into their grooves.

You will also note that several of the boards had cracked (either from age, or from us removing them), so each of those had to be carefully reglued. We also had to trim all the boards to length. This was either because the "nice edge" was crooked, or because they were now too long to slip back under the edge of the wall.



In the end, however, the floor turned out looking really good. The majority of all the gaps are now either tight, or with a maximum gap of around 1/8" (with most being no more than 1/16").



Here's the transition edge. The line looks great, the only problem is that now there's about a 1/16" to 1/8" drop between the two floors because of the planing. This will be difficult to fix, especially with the other floor being solid hardwood.





While I was away, Pierre also did a bit of work himself, namely all the sanding in the hallway to remove all the textured gesso work on the wall going up the stairs. He did this using a power sander and 80 grit paper. This made a LOT of dust and he worked on this while no one else was in the house (and obviously wearing a mask).



He also patched all the holes in the wall and smoothed everything out.



EDIT: Forgot the last photo. Pierre & Angie after a long day's work.




* For those who might want more details about my reasoning VS his in regards to the floor, here's a bit more of my thoughts. First of all, this is an antique floor. It's old wood, it's very dry, it's damaged, and it has nails in it. It's also warped and bent in a lot of places because of how it's been installed and in place for about 140-150 years. One of the boards had bend in it that was about a 2" curve over a 2 foot span. When you pass something this fragile through a machine like a planer, there's a good amount of risk involved. The wood could chip badly, the wood could jam in the machine and leave a deep mark, and there are other issues like the loose knots being yanked out of their holes and chewed up by the machine. One of the other major problems with planing a floor like this is that the boards might not be the same thickness across the surface. The boards could be thicker near the edges of the room, and thinner in the centre, they were sanded in place, so it's impossible to tell exactly how everything will line up after it's laid back down. One of the problems we had when we reinstalled it was that come of the boards seemed to now have a sort of trapezoidal profile (one edge seemed thicker or higher than the other. In several spots this left us with the entire edge of a board being about 1/16" higher than the board next to it. The only way to fix this now is to sand down the floor even more. Before the boards were planed, they were around 1 3/16" to 1 1/4" and after that, they came out barely being 1 1/8" on most of them, which means we lost about 1/8" in thickness, which is quite a lot. Now we need to lose another 1/16" to get rid of all the fuck-ups.

Victorian Farmhouse - Days 2 & 3 Bathroom Demo

Days 2 and 3 were largely spent on more demolition work (demolishing the bathroom, the HVAC stack in the office, and the cabinet over the electrical panel in the living room), as well as exterior work cutting trees and shrubs. As I mentioned previously, Angie's father also found an amazing historic masonry guy who's been working on the foundation, so I have photos of the foundation in this post. We also did some demo work in the upstairs hallway.

First, a bit more of the exterior, and some updated floor plans.

Here's the new floor plan with adjustments showing more correct proportions for the front porch, and now showing details of the attached barn and shed. If you're good with measurements and you want a better idea of the size of the place, the old farmhouse portion has the living room 11 feet wide, and 17 feet long. The office is 11 feet wide, by 10 feet, and the front hallway with the stairs is around 11 feet by 6ish. The main footprint of the farmhouse is roughly 17' x 22' on the interior.



Here is the house viewed from the road. Rather than having a large front facade facing the road, the wider side of the house faces South for better light. In the back you can see the detached barn along with the little "side addition" poking out of the right hand side at the bottom. There's a small window there. I mentioned to Angie that the right side of the barn is so roughly finished that I think it was chopped down and shortened at one point (more photos of this side are farther down). The original footprint of the barn likely lined up with that little side portion. I'm really not sure why they would have shrunk it down.

Also take note of all the wild grape vines that need to be removed.



The front porch is a later addition (or rebuild). The "long term plan" would be to completely rebuild this as an L-shaped wrap-around porch.





The edge of the roof needs work. Part of the roof line has been boxed-in on the North side with more modern flashing, and half of it is falling down currently.



On this side of the house, there's a very tall cinder block chimney that used to feed into the old furnace. It is no longer used, but for now the top has been repaired, and the plan is to leave it in place. There's also a large antenna, which is in good shape.

You can also see the two small rooms that lead off from the kitchen. The gutters may need to be replaced, but otherwise it's not too bad. Paint and window glazing.



The three small rooms in the photo above correspond to the sections highlighted in blue below. Rooms 1 and 2 have the white siding and windows, and they are on a foundation, while room 3 is in brown barn wood, and not on a foundation.



Here you can see the chimney and antenna better, as well as the roof line and flashing that needs major repairs. Also note that these large cedars have been trimmed along their base. That one branch at the top will be removed.



Here's another look at those three small rooms. Room 3 leads into the rough garage/barn, as well as out into this part of the yard (though I'm not sure if that door opens very well). We plan to remove all the trees visible in this photo (not the cedars). The trees are nice, but they're growing right up against the buildings.





This is the old well. It has several small hawthorn trees (a type of crab-apple). We'd like to keep these, but it would be better to remove them as well. There is another smaller tree growing farther from the house.



West-facing roof line. The upstairs window flashing will need repairs/replacement. The wood roof line will either need to be painted, or capped with flashing.



Here's the right-hand wall of the detached barn. You can see the ends of exposed floor beams as well as poorly patched wooden planks. another sign of the shortening of the barn is the very roughly cut tin along the roof line (not that visible in this photo). A bunch of these trees will (or should) be removed. The majority of them are growing right next to the building, which isn't good.



Here is the extreme back end of the house, showing the main house in the back, the barn addition in the centre-right, and an attached shed on the end in the foreground. The black grating is just a trailer where tree branches were getting piled.



The attached shed with the slanted flat roof is highlighted in blue below:



These next few photos show the interior of the garage/barn portion (highlighted in blue on the next image).





The construction on this part of the barn is very old, and it uses pegged corner joints and massive timbers.



The floor boards of the loft are nice thick barn wood, but they span too wide of an area (more than 4 feet), so everything is sagging.



The white door leads into "room 3" on the floor plan. Behind the plank wall on the right is the staircase leading up into the loft and over the kitchen (shown in the first post, but included again here for clarity).





This is the loft over the garage area of the barn.



Section over the kitchen. Next time I'm in here, I'll take more photos.



Next, I'll show you guys the foundation. This was after several days that the mason had been working on it (maybe even a week). When I had first visited the house in mid-March I had seen the foundation, and while it looked pretty good (nice and square, and nice and straight) it looked more like piled stones than an actual wall. There was very little of the mortar left in place, and you could easily slide your hand between the stones by several inches. There was also enough water flowing into the house that it was like a small stream.

I had told Angie & Pierre that we could do the foundation work ourselves, but this would have taken AGES. I'm actually very glad that her father found someone who specializes in this, and who could do it for a reasonable price. The same man has also offered to redo the tin on the roof (he has spare tin sheets), which will save a lot of money. The current roof leaks in one or two spots, and it has a few tiny holes as well (we saw this from inside the attic).

The foundation looks AMAZING. It looks even better in person. I think everyone (myself included) was very impressed with the work and the quality. Side note: the stones mostly all look uniformly grey and shiny because they were painted at one time.





This support beam will be beefed-up or swapped for a steel I-beam. It is roughly next to the staircase.



Random detail shots. The historic hardware will be cleaned and restored.



This is the only "mineral clay" knob (aka Bennington Knob) in the house. All the others are white. I'm not sure if we're keeping this oddball knob, or switching to a white one for consistency. I happen to have spare white knobs that I can donate for the house (all my knobs will be black ones).



Bathroom Demo

Here are a few more details of the bathroom. I was very surprised to see that the light switch was also a matching lavender.



Lavender sink, and matching lavender swirl counter top.



A very small (and very low) mirror (no medicine cabinet).



Lavender toilet, and mauve cover. Note heating duct location.



After some drywall removal, I found more of this wallpaper border that continues into the hallway.



The acrylic bath surround panels were removed. I'm very glad we're also changing the drywall (in favour or waterproof/mildew resistant drywall).





Next Day

On day 3, I didn't jump back immediately into the bathroom. I was anxious to tear down the rest of the duct work columns and that cabinet in the living room.

Office stack gone (the plywood one).



Living room cabinet (part way):





More old carpet-pattern linoleum, with other layers under it.





We knew about the plumbing stack, but had forgotten about the heating duct. This is the one that ends right next to the toilet for the bathroom.



I found it really interesting that this floor seems to have had the exact same colour scheme as my 1923 house: first painted bright yellow, and later a medium brown.





After:



If we can move the main electrical panel this corner will all be hidden behind a small and narrow corner (drywall) box, with matching wood paneling and trim to camouflage it.



I'm really hoping that we can relocate the box, because it's currently only a 60 amp service (I think) and while the old wiring is still technically fine (perfectly safe and up to code) it's a complete mess. We plan to separate everything into breakers "by room" and add additional plugs (the house never originally had electricity so the current plugs are few and far between).





Some of this feeds into the kitchen addition, some goes to the garage, and we know that 2 wires lead to all the electrical upstairs.



This was interesting. It looks like just a really OLD plug, possibly one of the first electrical outlets from back in the 1920s. It has a screw-on cover, and it has a single outlet. Still works.





More foundation work at the end of day 3 (though the mason had been at it for about a week, not just 3 days). The white is dry, the brown is fresh.



You can kind of see how this part wasn't done (or it was only partially done). The gaps are much deeper.





The bathroom was 60% gutted by end of day 3. I had taken out the vanity, the half wall, the flooring, and most of the drywall. We were left with a mess of loose insulation filled with mouse poop (which can be dangerous to handle). We removed some of this, but we needed a shop vac for the rest.



The floors upstairs are all very high quality 1 1/8" thick tongue-and-groove pine. Because it's so thick, and still in good shape, the current plan is to simply repaint it all (rather than install tile, which would raise the bathroom floor quite a bit).



Not shown in these pictures was a partial demo of the upstairs hallway. We wanted to see what was behind the awful paneling. More on that later.