The Garage Gets New Windows

We replaced the windows on the garage. There. The preservationist said it. We replaced windows. This is certainly something we don't advocate if you've got old wood windows, because they'll last far longer than most replacements you can buy. We've been rebuilding all of the old wood windows on our 1913 house, adding storm windows, and insulating and caulking around them to make them just as energy efficient as replacement windows.

The garage, however, had 1960s single-paned aluminum windows and one huge single-paned 4-panel picture window. The glass was broken on a few of the windows and most of them wouldn't open anymore. Most of the glass was frosted, which is great for the doctor's office it was, but not so good if you want to know who is in the yard. We decided to replace.

The replacement windows are actually a good example of why we don't advocate replacing windows. We chose sliding windows rather than the double hung windows that were there, mostly for cost because the existing openings were quite wide. That means that the windows went from being a horizontal element to a vertical element. Vinyl windows also have much larger trim pieces than most old windows do, making the openings appear smaller. The new windows completely change the look of the building. Maybe okay for the garage, but not okay for a historic building. It's a garage though. So it's okay. Or so I keep telling myself.

The Wall Comes Down!

You may have noticed that we lovingly refer to our latest project as "the garage", but it has no garage doors? Well, we have remedied that situation. One empty-ish wall with just a single pedestrian door in one of the gable ends now sports 2 garage doors!

This was a well-planned project. We cut out the outline for the doors with a concrete saw so we have didn't have to worry about bricks coming out that we didn't want to come out. And knowing that it would take a bit to install the garage doors and that we had some tools inside that we didn't want to move or risk having stolen while the wall was open, we installed the garage doors on the inside of the wall before we knocked it down. As soon as the walls came down, so could the garage doors - voila! Instant security!

Want to see how we got from the first photo to the second? Check out the video!

Remember the Garage?

Remember the building we bought to turn into a garage? And the never-ending roofing project of last summer? Well, we've finally gotten back to it. And made quite a bit of progress!

The building was a doctor's office, so it had a waiting area, 2 bathrooms, a utility room, and a number of examining rooms. This view is from the waiting area.

We tore down walls, walls, and more walls to clear out the area that will become the garage and workshop.

And ended up with a nice empty space. This is only one section of the building. It is really an L-shaped open space. Trusses provide the structure for the building so we were able to remove all of the interior walls without worry that it would fall down!

We rented a floor scraper to remove the tile floor from the concrete. Not asbestos. We had to have it tested so we could throw it in the dumpster.

We've started to put things back now. We've added the framing for the walls between the garage and studio and storage room. We've replaced the electrical panel and meter box and gotten an electrical rough-in inspection so we could have the electricity turned on. The HVAC was installed last week. Next up is installing the garage doors and framing and plumbing inspections!

Time for Work on Our Own House

Once we got that mid-century rancher on the market, we had some time to work on our own house. Remember that 1913 American Four Square that lends its name to this blog? Well, we've owned it for almost 11 years now, and it's still not done. And once in a while, we have the free time to work on it. Since we had such a cold and snowy winter and our other projects are unheated, our house won. 

The master bedroom was nearly done, but had been awaiting a ceiling, reworking one of the windows, and the stripping and reinstallation of the doors and trim for some time. We moved everything out of the room and polyurethaned the floor one more time for good measure too. 

The result feels posh, cozy, and hotel-like. What you don't see is all the work that went into that one room over the years. The roof leaked at the chimney and the dormer when we first moved in so we couldn't use the room until we got that fixed. The water damaged the ceiling and walls so we gutted the room to insulate the walls and put furring on the ceiling to allow us to cover it with a layer of sheetrock (which was the view from the bed for a number of years). We replaced all of the electrical wires in the house so we were able to put outlets and ceiling lights were we needed them. In a house without air conditioning, a ceiling fan is crucial! The wood windows have been reglazed, the weight pockets insulated, and the ropes reinstalled. The floor was sanded and refinished....Phew! Done! Now it's warm outside, so on to the garage!

The Quick Flip: A Mid-Century Rancher

In the embarrassingly long time since the last post (has it really been 9 months?!), a lot has happened. Progress has been made on the garage, though it's not done yet. Progress has been made on our house, though it's not done yet either. But those are stories for another day. 

We spent much of the time between the last post and mid-January making an 8 hour round trip drive on the weekends to prepare my mother-in-law's house for sale. Some of that time was spent packing up the house, but the rest was spent prettying it up and fixing anything we thought the home inspector might pick up when we tried to sell it.

The house is a brick and frame mid-century rancher (historic now!) so it needed some updating. Fortunately, much of that had been done over the years. We had already upgraded the bathrooms and she had had the maple floors refinished and the outside repainted in recent years. We wanted people to see the unusual features like the sunken living room with the diagonal wide pine paneling and 2-sided fireplace and the high bedroom windows as positive elements and not as liabilities.  

We did that by modernizing as many other features as we could while still keeping the mid-century charm. We replaced the front door with more modern model, replaced the attic stairs with a less rickety model, adjusted doors that didn't close properly, repainted all of the rooms with fresher colors, upgraded the electrical panel, and many other smaller tasks.

We did a larger makeover of the kitchen. While we didn't want to spend too much money in case someone came in and redid it completely, we wanted to make it look as modern and inviting as we could while keeping the pine cabinets. We shortened the peninsula and curved it to make more seating at the breakfast bar. We added a glass tile back splash, replaced the vinyl floor, and flipped the electrical panel to a opposite side of the wall.

Our hard work paid off, because despite putting it on the market in January during the snowiest winter that part of Virginia has had in a while, the house has sold. And we're back home working on our own projects. Stay tuned!

It. Is. Done. (The Roof That Is)

We actually finished the roof over a week ago, I just haven't gotten to updating the blog. My husband asked what I wanted for my birthday? I said, "to finish this stupid roof." Stupid roof finished. In a drizzly rain. On my birthday. But, it is done. Woo hoo!

Before we can get rid of the dumpster, we need to complete the interior demolition. Since this building had been a doctor's office, it is cut up into a bunch of little examining rooms off of the main hallway. This photo may not look like much, but it represents the brute labor of removing 2 of the walls to turn 3 rooms into 1. There's more sheetrock pulling and 2x4 smashing to come before all the walls are down, but it's looking more like a garage already!

The Weather is Wonderful!

The weather is wonderful! Or so says the fortune cookie we got recently. Maybe in China! We started work on the garage roof almost 2 months ago. As we may have mentioned, it keeps raining. And raining. In case you don't believe us, here are some hard facts from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg for June 1st through today. At least 27 of the last 42 days have had measurable rain. Measurable to the tune of 13.26 inches! And that doesn't include the rain we fought in May. We just have the ridge and chimney flashing to finish, but guess what, it's raining again!

Roofing Interlude: The Zimmerman House

We were so close to finishing the roof, we could taste it. Just 2 more swaths of roofing felt and the accompanying shingles and we'd be done. Not even a days' work. And...we got called out of town rather suddenly. 

While we were gone though, we got to see an impressive brick ranch house - the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Zimmerman House in Manchester, New Hampshire. If this had been the little brick ranch next to our house, you can bet we wouldn't be turning it into a garage! The Zimmerman House is a Usonian house and is similar to the Prairie Style that he is known for, but smaller and (supposedly) built for the common man, though the price tag would have been rather steep for most when this was built in the 1950s.

I loved the Garden Room where there were troughs to grow plants just inside and just outside the windows to make it feel like you're outside even when you're inside. 

Because the house was built into the land, you could reach the roof in the back. The roofing was supposed to be cedar shakes, but the city wouldn't allow that so it is clay tile instead. And, yes, in true Frank Lloyd Wright fashion, it did leak.

A fun interlude - now back to making sure the garage roof doesn't leak!

Roofing the Garage: Days 5-6

Finally! We were home for a DRY weekend! We finished the front of the house to about 2 rows below the ridge on Saturday and the back to just below the chimney on Sunday. Woo hoo! The end is near!

Just as exciting, we got the person who is salvaging metal from the building to clear the overgrowth (and poison ivy!) from the alley between our house and the garage. Since the alley is owned by the town, we asked them if they would chip the brush and haul it away for free if we cleaned up the mess. They agreed and the work was completed this weekend too.

Now we can see the garage from our house - much better for security. We're just hoping Tommy didn't get a killer case of poison ivy from his hard work!

Roofing the Garage: Days 1-4

The rain. It's amazing how much rain we've gotten this spring. And always when we are able to work on the roof! We did finally get some shingles up last week, but not until after some drama and...rain.

Due to equipment failure and...rain...it took 2 days to replace the few pieces of decking that were rotted. We haven't turned the electricity on to the garage yet, so we're using a generator. The generator had been sitting idle for a few months and, of course, it didn't want to work to power a saw and the air nailer. Plan B: use the new cordless saw. Wouldn't you know the new cordless saw's battery charger didn't work? Plan C: back to the generator. We finally got it running, but only had an hour left that day to work. Despite the setbacks (and rain) we did get the decking repaired and shingling finally started last week!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 9 & 10

"That's the same photo as in the last post," you say. Well, you're right. Things look pretty much the same so I didn't take a new picture. What you can't see is that we've removed all of the nails from the roof. The nails that held in the tar paper, the 2 layers of shingles, and the roll roofing that was put on top of the shingles. So, yes, lots and lots of nails. We were able to pull nails for the few hours last week when it wasn't raining. On Wednesday morning, the only place that it was raining in the entire area was over our house. Go figure.

We also had a bit of excitement on one of those rainy days. See that tiny pile of lumber in front of the dumpster? Someone thought it was free for the taking, pulled his pickup in and took a few pieces. Not all of it, mind you, just a few pieces. Like he was trying to finish a project and was too lazy to drive the 2 miles to 84 Lumber. Since we live next door, we saw him leaving the yard, but didn't get the license plate number. It was less than $50 worth of supplies, but it was the principle of the thing. That and the loss of peace of mind - we've lived here 10 years and haven't had any problems with theft in the past. We're storing our lumber on the roof from now on.

We're finally officially done unroofing now and on to roofing!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 7 & 8

We had a bit of a hiatus between Days 5 & 6 and Days 7 & 8 of unroofing the garage because of this:

Who's to say no to a trip to the beach? The garage roof has been leaking for years, what's another week? We had plans to finish removing the last strip of roof on Sunday when we returned, but...it rained. All day. So it was Monday before the final unroofing was completed. That took more time than expected because one of our crew of 2 (me) came down with a cold and felt a little too wobbly to be on the roof.

Roofing supplies arrived on Monday also. The delivery truck didn't have equipment to place them on the roof, so that was up to us. We rented a ladder hoist. Which was fine, but it didn't come with instructions for putting it together, or using it, so it took a couple of trips into the house to check the internet to get it right and then we only figured out that it would dump the load at the top of the roof by accident. The hoist also had a partially stripped belt so it would only lift 2 shingles packages rather than the 400lbs it was rated for. The other problem is that one of us (me) isn't strong enough to be hefting squares of shingles. So that left it all to the man on the roof. Load the hoist, send 'em up, climb the ladder, place them on the roof, repeat.

It took all day Tuesday to get all of the shingles and roofing felt up on the roof and placed, but he did it. Direct quote, "Don't ever let me replace an entire roof again." Duly noted.

Unroofing the Garage: Days 5 & 6

We had the dumpster pulled from the front of the garage and a new one placed in the back on Thursday. Our end-of-week plans changed so we ended up with the gift of two extra days to work on the roof.

After waiting for the roof to dry out after torrential rains on Wednesday night, we got to the roof Thursday afternoon. Friday was downright chilly with a stiff wind, but actually good weather for roof work - no worries about overheating.

 
Just one more day of unroofing and pulling nails and the roof will go back on!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 3 & 4

This whole unroofing thing would be going much faster if we had more stamina, fewer other commitments, and control over the weather! We got the rest of the front portion of the roof off in Days 3 & 4. 

This led us to the conclusion that...we had to get the dumpster moved. There was just not going to be any good way to get the shingles from the backside of the roof to the dumpster on the front side. We tried throwing them and missed about half. We tried putting a tarp on the ground and dragging the tarp full of shingles to the dumpster, but overfilled it and spent more time emptying the tarp than we did taking down shingles. That just wasn't going to be sustainable. 

Since we'd also been working on removing plasterboard and insulation from the interior, the dumpster was already over half full, so we decided to pay the extra fee and have it pulled so we could get  a new one placed on the back side of the garage this morning. We scrapped the #1 copper that was in the valleys of the garage yesterday and that paid for cost of the extra dumpster pull. Win-win! 

Now we're just waiting for the roof to dry out after yesterday's rain. Before it rains again this afternoon.

Unroofing the Garage: Days 1 & 2

When we last blogged, we were thrilled to have bought another house. Then life intervened. Until early April. So here we are, in May, finally working on turning that house into a garage. We have puddles inside when it rains, so the first order of business is a new roof. 

We had great plans to get that done in a week. Turns out our local landfill now requires certification that what you're putting in your dumpster is asbestos-free. So, to get the dumpster, we had to take samples of the things we would be putting into it to a lab to have it tested. Which they had to send out. And there was a weekend in there before we got the results back. Last Thursday, we got the dumpster. 

We had a productive day and a half of removing the old roof, then it rained. And it rained. And it continued to rain. Now we have even bigger puddles in the garage and are wondering if we'll EVER get the roof off, but we're on our way!

We Bought Another House!

For most of the time we've lived in our present house, the house next door has been empty. It's a 1950s brick ranch house that had been turned into a doctor's office at some point so it's more office than home at this point. We've dreamed about buying the house for years and turning it into a garage and workshop. We have an old Jeep that's been under a car cover since we moved here and our basement is far less than ideal for a wood shop.

Today, the house next door, and several other properties, were up for auction. We watched the number of people checking it out last week at the preview. We tried to judge what people might be thinking about the place and how much it they might think it was worth. It certainly wasn't worth the appraisal they had on it. It's a nice lot, but the building would be a lot of work to turn back into a house. We were afraid someone would buy it, tear it down, and put something next door that wouldn't be a good neighbor to us.

We listened to the auction for the properties before ours and they went for below, way below, the appraised prices. There was hope! Our auction started and the price was low, real low. It was us against one other guy. He blinked. We stayed in the game. We bought the house! We need to wait 120 days for the IRS to decide if the price meets their lien before we start working on it, but after that we'll be on our way to having a 1500 square foot garage!

Adventures in Sandblasting

It's been a while since the last post, mostly because we haven't been doing much preservation-related. We got a sandblaster back in July that sat in the living room for a couple of months because a part was broken. We had gotten so used to it being part of the scenery that I had forgotten it didn't belong there until I started to dust it. We've gotten the sandblaster fixed now and moved it from the living room. We've also gotten the cast iron claw foot tub that precipitated the need for the sandblaster. This is a friend's tub that had been used outdoors as a horse trough for a while. The inside enamel is fine, but the outside wasn't quite ready for prime time. Enter the sandblaster.

We're learning about sandblasting as we go. While we've done it before, it was in a shop situation where everything was set up for us. We didn't have to choose the sand and find out the hard way that a sieve is really, really handy. In other words, the first day's sandblasting was a bit of a dud. The play sand clogged up the hose and more time was spent unclogging than blasting. We found blasting media at a local Tractor Supply and tried that next. It worked much better, though still clogged periodically.

The tub is going in our downstairs bathroom which has white tile with black accents. We decided the outside of the tub would be shiny black so it was primed first.

We then used 3 coats of black spray paint to cover the tub. We did this Labor Day weekend, which, anyone in the eastern half of the country knows was still stuck in the weather patterns caused by Hurricane Isaac. There were storms popping up here and there all weekend. It seemed that every time we went out to sandblast or paint, it would start sprinkling, then pouring rain. Persistence paid off though and we got it done!

Now the other story that goes along with the clogged sandblaster and the popup showers is that a cast iron claw foot tub is HEAVY!  We got it onto the truck with help from friends. The sawhorses you see it sitting on in the photos were about the same height as the truck bed so we could just slide it off and onto them. But getting in the house?? Not a job for the 2 of us (the one of us not pictured is just too whimpy!) So the tub sat in our yard for a week under a tarp and, since we live 30 miles away from our strongest friends, once it was painted we had no idea how to get it into the house. Fortunately, we were saved by a Virginia Tech football game. Friends dropped by our house to see us and we got them to help move the tub in.

Now the tub's inside and sitting on its side. We got to see inside the tub for the first time and are now working to clean all the stains from its previous life. We also need to decide what color to paint the claw feet and find the missing cleat for one of the feet to attach it to the bottom of the tub. Then we can flip it upright, plumb it, and relax in warm, blissful bubbles!

Blacksburg Then and Now

We are excited to announce the release of our new book: Blacksburg Then & Now from Arcadia Publishing!

We had lots of fun finding historical photographs of Blacksburg and Virginia Tech for the "Then" portion of the book then finding those same locations to take the "Now" photographs. We really enjoyed comparing what is there today with what was there in the past and uncovering why some of the changes were made. For example, Blacksburg's Main Street has a jog just past College Avenue where the historic buildings don't line up with the rest of the street. The reason? There was once a Preston and Olin Institute (Virginia Tech's precursor) building in the middle of Main Street's current path - the old Main Street jogged around the building.

We'll be holding a book signing at the Community Arts Information Office on College Avenue next to the Lyric Theatre on Friday from 4-6pm where we'll also have an exhibit from the book on display during the month of July. On July 4th from 10am - 1:30pm, we'll be at Historic Smithfield Plantation. Hope to see you there!

The Cost of Cleaning a Dryer Vent

It started as a simple question really, but then it all does, doesn't it? The question? "Could you please clean the dryer vent? It smells funny." Since it hadn't been cleaned really well in a while, my husband took this opportunity to give the dryer vent the cleaning of all cleanings. He pulled out the dryer, unhooked the gas line, and unhooked the washer hoses too to really get in there to the vent line. He took the dryer apart, used the Lint Lizard we were given by his mom, and got every speck of lint out of the dryer itself. He took the scrunchy metal vent pipe outside and washed it thoroughly.

Our dryer is not on an outside wall so there is a traditional metal vent pipe to the wall which attaches to a piece of PVC sewer pipe to get it to the outside vent. This is to code and generally works just dandily. That also means you can do crazy stuff with it like hose it down to get all the linty muck out of it. He did just that, sending a soggy pile of lint flying out the side of the house. It took all day to clean the dryer vent, but that was okay. All was clean. All was good.

And then he came to me at 4pm on Sunday afternoon and said we needed to make an emergency trip to Lowes. After checking to see that they were still open (till 7!), we drove the 25 miles to our closest home improvement store to buy new washer hoses. They worked. We did some laundry. All was good.

And then on Monday, I noticed something smelled a bit off. It seemed to be the dryer. But worse than that, there was a bit of a gas smell. Yes, the gas line was leaking too. Another trip to Lowes later, the gas line was replaced. We did some more laundry. All was good.

And then on Thursday, I noticed an odd, sort of wet paper sort of smell downstairs. It has been raining a lot so I thought maybe some water had gotten in somewhere. Later in the day, I happened to look up while I was in the kitchen and saw a bubble in the ceiling. Under the washing machine connections. I ran upstairs to turn the water off up there and the cold water valve sprayed at me as I tried to close it. Off went the water to the second floor. All was not good.

My husband didn't get home until late that evening and had to do something with the plumbing. The water was off upstairs to keep it from leaking and with the water off, that meant no showers. So, out came the sheetrock saw and, with it, the wall around the washing machine pipes. Of course, for some odd reason, he had put a second valve in the wall for the hot water, but not the cold and, of course, it was the cold that was leaking. Fortunately, he had the pieces around to fix that problem and installed a cold water valve for the night. In the process, he spilled the purple primer all over himself (which apparently burns quite a bit!). All was not good.

So, at the moment, we are without a washer and dryer. And the cost of cleaning the dryer vent? We've spent $50 on new hoses and a gas line. And there's more cost to come to fix the pipes for the washing machine connection, the wall that we tore open to get to the pipes, and the ceiling in the kitchen with the water bulge.

Oh, and the dryer vent still smells funky.

Preservation vs. Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets

I hate to keep picking on Virginia Tech, but they've been making it so easy lately. First with their plans to cut part of the old growth Stadium Woods to make way for a new indoor football practice facility, and now with their plans to tear down 3 of the oldest buildings on campus to make way for a new dormitory for the Corps of Cadets. The latter has earned Virginia Tech a place on Preservation Virginia's 2012 Most Endangered Historic Sites list.

Lane Hall, Virginia Tech

Lane, Rasche, and Brodie Halls make up the Upper Quad, creating a picturesque courtyard used daily by the Corps. Lane Hall was built as Barracks No. 1 in 1888 and currently contains offices for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Rasche and Brodie Halls are both Cadet Corps dormitories each with an older section built in 1894 and 1900 respectively and newer additions made in the 1950s. The buildings of the Upper Quad are some of the few remaining buildings on campus to be built of brick rather than the Hokie Stone form of limestone that adorns construction after 1900.

Drill Field, Virginia Tech, 1890s
photo from Virginia Tech Special Collections

In Virginia Tech's defense, the modus operandi of the university over the years has been to tear down and rebuild - they're just following long held tradition. Today, most of the earliest buildings on campus are gone. The view on Blacksburg's Main Street where a Preston and Olin Institute building once caused the street to jog around it and the buildings of the Drill Field have both changed significantly over the years. The same thing would never happen at the University of Virginia where the Lawn and Rotunda are considered sacred and have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Though parts of Virginia Tech's campus could be nominated to the National Register, the designation has not been pursued. A notable exception is Solitude, the early 1800s home of Col. Robert Preston, from whom the land for Virginia Tech was acquired in 1872.

Solitude, Virginia Tech

As in all cases of preservation, the facts can be spun to support whichever side of the cause you'd like. For developers, or university officials who want to tear down a building or 3, that means pointing out things like cracked plaster and the lack of air conditioning to make the point that the buildings should be replaced. We've heard that the bean counters have been given such a tour of the buildings and asked to determine how much it will cost to demolish them. We can only hope that an equivalent and fair determination of the cost of renovating these buildings is also being prepared.

The greenest building is the one already built. Rather than just paying lip service to the idea of sustainability, reusing and retrofitting older campus buildings like these would go a long way toward real sustainability. So would preserving Stadium Woods.