Victorian Farmhouse - Part 11

Rather than keep track of days, or finding specific titles for all the farmhouse posts, I'm just going to switch to "parts". This is the 11th post about it, so it will be part 11, and will continue from there.

I've been pretty lazy about updates on the farmhouse for the past 2 months. This doesn't mean that things aren't still being worked on, or that I didn't take photos. It just takes a LOT of time to edit all the photos, and white down everything in an orderly, cohesive fashion. I don't make any money off this blog, so it's really only updated because I WANT to.

The last post was from days 12-13, I think, which was back in May. Quite a bit has been done since then, but not nearly as much as I would have hoped. The bathroom is still untouched, the electrical still isn't finished, and nothing is ready for paint yet.

Angie & Pierre, I think were hoping to move in by August (early or late, I really dunno). I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but their apartment building where they currently live is in the middle of some serious (and very disruptive) renovations where the entire exterior walls are being removed and replaced. I'm not entirely sure how that works (without the building collapsing) but there are basically just plastic tarps everywhere, lots of dust, noise, and they can't wait to get out of there. Then again, the farmhouse still isn't ready to be lived in (no electrical except for in the kitchen, and no bath/shower).

Since I'm SO FAR BEHIND on posts, I'm really going to skim through a lot of what was done. Either with just brief explanations, or with fewer photos (there are still over 100 - not all of which will be in this post). A lot of the work was floors, more demolition, electrical, and some trim.

Alright with that out of the way, here's the completed soffit/fascia trim. I'm a bit sad that the beautiful and original crown mouldings were unceremoniously ripped out and thrown away, though they were so badly deteriorated that they would have needed replacing anyway. You can also see in this photo that the peak's siding is a very faded mint green. The front of the house is the same.





This is the sill plate (beam) repair, which will need to be patched with siding. Angie's father repaired this.



More soffit.



This shows some of the foundation repairs to the stone (mortar). It's obviously much rougher because it will be buried.



The antenna was taken down. Also note the giant pile of branches and shrubs that were removed.



They hadn't finished the last two sections of soffit for another 2 weeks.



Does anyone know what these pretty indigo flowers are? EDIT: they're periwinkle. They're about an inch wide, and the leaves are glossy and in pairs (see stem just on the right). These were in the flowerbed by the kitchen addition.



One of the problems we ran into with the re-laying of the floor in the office was the AMOUNT of space we actually took up by eliminating all the gaps. I'd say we ate up at least 3 inches. This meant that we landed part of the way into the supporting cross-beam I had installed. At this point the beam can't be moved, and re-cutting the hole isn't an easy option. The only other "easy" option would have been to cut the board in half and replace the half with the partial hole. BUT, if you know me, I'm not about making things easy. I'm all about making it look good AT ANY COST.

The solution was to carefully carve a diagonal into the cross-beam to accept a custom duct fitting.



The beam was only overlapping by about half, so a small slope isn't going to weaken it very much. The new beams are also only to add rigidity to the floor. They aren't even technically needed.



Angie filling nail holes and imperfections in the trim.



This was as much as we could install of the floor. The remaining lengths of wood aren't wide enough to fill the rest of the hole.



I'm not entirely sure what the next two photos were meant to show, but they are already resized and saved (over a month ago).





Here's the new floor transition. Clean, crisp and beautiful! All the broken and cracked sections were copiously glued in place.



Yesss... Note the crooked vent hole (which will be fixed and straightened in later photos). Also note the knot holes.



Here's the last 2 rows of original floor (not installed). Even loose (not tightened-up) there's about 4" of missing floor to replace.



This was on another day (and took a good part of the day to do). Angelina was REALLY bothered by the location of the vent in the living room. I agreed, but I wasn't sure if we could fix it. I had my suspicions that it was there because there was a ceiling joist in the way. The basement (stone foundation) also had this vent completely sealed and cemented in place (all around it).



Well, as I said, it really REALLY was bugging her, so we took a look at it. Turns out it would be possible to fix it. We removed the vent/grille/boot in the upstairs spare bedroom, and found that there was space to the right. Likewise, all the loose stone, sand, and rubble of the stone foundation could pretty easily be moved to accommodate the pipe to the right (into the corner). The small bits of loose floor were rotted from moisture.







I had to make SEVERE modifications to the top (sloped/angled) boot to get this to work. I essentially had to completely remove the joint fitting (the coupler part).



A couple of elbow joints, and then more filling with crushed stone.



You can kind of see what I did here. The joint is missing, and the elbow goes directly into the sloped cone. It actually worked out really well. The boot isn't at a perfect angle with the floor, but it's only about 1/4" off.



Angie was VERY happy.

While I had to cut the tongue and groove ceiling to do the repairs/modifications, I also cut the patch for the ceiling where the round stovepipe vent was. The key is to have a staggered joint. If we had plenty of old salvaged tongue and groove to work with, I'd have made it even more random, but we are limited, so I cut off as little as possible.