Help Preservation LEED the Way!

Preservationists are well aware of the confusing disconnect between green building and historic preservation.  For some of us, this is a no-brainer: if you are reusing an existing building, that saves our natural resources, keeps building materials from the landfill, and often maintains some pretty significant environmental design principles like building orientation, wind breaks, energy efficient solid brick walls, and other features.  Unfortunately, many of those in the green building world see old buildings as the enemy that must be eradicated!  New technology is best!  Tear it down!  Build it new!  It can't possibly be energy efficient unless its new!

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an international building and construction rating system being used in many states and localities to develop green buildings.  In LEED's earliest forms, it gave very few points for building or material reuse unless the materials were bought elsewhere.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation has been diligently working with the U.S. Green Building Council to improve the LEED standards.  The most recent LEED draft is out with a comment period through January 14th.  Check out the National Trust's blog posting to learn more about how you can comment on the new standards.

A great project in our area that brings together historic preservation and LEED principles is the Blacksburg Motor Company building.  This 1920's Art Deco building was built as an automobile showroom and service station.  When Blacksburg needed more space for its Planning and Engineering Department, the Motor Company building next door was a good location.  After restoration and environmental remediation, the building has improved the streetscape while keeping the offices in the walkable downtown, a geothermal heat pump conditions the building, and many historic features of the building were maintained including the tin ceilings and large showroom windows.  The town received  state and federal historic tax credits while achieving a LEED Platinum rating for the building.

Make your voice heard and help preservation LEED the way with more great projects like the Blacksburg Motor Company building by commenting on the new LEED guidelines!

Feel their pane. SaveTheWindows!

Dear Friend,

Cast aside...Rejected...

Craving your attention as you look RIGHT THROUGH THEM!

What did beautiful, old windows ever do to deserve such heartless treatment?

As you read this, homeowners across America are ripping innocent, unsuspecting, character-rich, older and historic windows out of their homes; casting them aside for new models.

http://www.savethewindows.org

Their despair is clear. But the real tragedy is this: The sparkly allure of these new windows is short-lived. Most window manufacturers don't want homeowners to know it, but repairing old windows can actually be cheaper and more energy efficient in the long run. And, greener. 

Before you decide to replace your windows, get the facts. You have a choice.

For too long your windows have suffered in silence. It's time to heed their cries:

Watch SaveTheWindows today and then learn more about how you can save money while saving your windows:

http://www.savethewindows.org

You won't be sorry.

(Today's blog post courtesy of Preservation Nation.) 

A Tale of an "Asbestos-Plagued" Home (not ours!)

One thing that really raises my preservationist hackles is when uninformed people make up reasons to tear down or otherwise ruin the character of an old building without consulting an expert.  By the time they've spouted off their opinion, all of the other uninformed people have formed a sympathetic opinion and it is too late for preservationists and experts to enter with the voice of reason.

 My latest hackle-raising had to do with an article in my hometown newspaper that described a house "plagued by asbestos."  Clearly that hits a hot button with most people.  Danger!  That stuff will kill you!  The article continues on about the "environmental problems" of this building and how "something has to be done" and that "the building is a hazard."  

Now, I don't really know anything about this building other than the photograph in the paper and the description in the article, but from what I do see and read, these guys are way off base!  Turns out the asbestos problems is that it has asbestos siding.  Now as far as asbestos problems go, this is one of the easiest to remedy.  Either leave the siding as is or take the dang siding off! 

Asbsestos siding was used from the 1920s through the 1970s and was made by adding asbestos into Portland cement and pressing it into a shingle shape and profile.  Essentially, it was the precursor of today's fiber cement board siding.  Because asbestos siding is durable and encapsulated in the cement, there is very little chance of the asbestos fiber coming free and floating through the air.  The danger comes from breathing the asbestos fibers.  According to the asbestos siding facts website, the siding can be safely removed by taking the precaution of wetting the siding so that no fibers will become airborne, wearing a respirator  and disposable clothing in case any fibers do become free, and disposing of the siding in double bagged and sealed trash bags.  The even more radical plan is to leave the siding be - unless it's damaged, it is not causing any harm, even if you touch it, and it will probably last longer than some of today's alternatives.

It sounds to me like the town really wants this property to augment the nearby playground and has found a way to use EPA funding to clean up an "environmental problem" rather than allowing someone to rehabilitate the property back into a single family home.  Of course tearing down this early 20th century house will change the character of the "center of town" where it is said to be located and, ironically, could cause the asbestos siding to become a n airborne hazard depending on how they choose to demolish the building.  Unfortunately, it's likely an uphill battle for preservationists and the voice of reason at this point.   

 

The French Doors - Oui Oui!

We have had a number of pleasant surprises in this house as we undo the work of previous owners in an effort to return the house to its former configuration.  Since the house had been turned into 3 apartments in the 1940s, some odd things happened - like the closing off of the foyer so that a bathroom could be placed there!  Access to the living room was probably closed off to the front door as well, since the front door probably accessed the upstairs apartment.  The exterior door in the living room accessed the apartment on the right side of the house and the exterior door into the former doctor's office accessed the third apartment on the left side of the house.

For those of you familiar with houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was often a set of French doors separating what most of us use as a living room now from the main foyer.  The previous owners of our house had re-opened the doorway from the foyer to the living room, but only to the width of a single door.  It was obvious to us that there had been a wider doorway there.  There was a square indentation in the floor for the French door to lock one of the doors closed and the framing was new.  When we were at the stage of removing walls that didn't belong, we found that - yes, indeed! - the original opening was wide enough for French doors!

Unfortunately, though some of the trim and doors that had been removed had been stored in the basement by some forward thinking person (or pack rat!), we did not still have the French doors.  Fortunately, Black Dog Salvage is nearby.  Now, if you enjoy looking at treasures from old buildings, check out your nearest architectural salvage store.  It's great fun and you can find details you didn't even know you needed.  Fortunately for us, we found a great set of oak French doors that are stained the color of the rest of our woodwork.  My husband swears they might be our original doors.

Because we needed to build the oak door frame and had far more important tasks on our plate, these doors have been languishing in our doctor's office waiting room/library/dining room/office for far too long.  As part of The Great Rearrangement, it is finally time to install the doors.  As of Sunday afternoon, we have the stationary French door installed.  The little matters of some missing hinge pins and a need to rearrange the living room so that the other door has room to swing kept us from completing this task, but those are quick fixes that should happen this week.  The door looks great and really adds some class to our foyer!

The Great Rearrangement

One sometimes huge disadvantage of living in the house that you are rehabilitating is the constant shuffle of furniture, etc. to work on rooms.  We have also inherited a lot of furniture since we moved into this house and, not having the proper place to set it up, we've got several rooms that look more like storage units than rooms of the house.   Complicating matters is the fact that we've changed the purpose of several rooms multiple times.  Fortunately, we had never actually finished these rooms so changing our minds hasn't had major consequences except for how to refer to the room that was to be the library, then the dining room, and now the office.

We have a lot of books, so having a library was a given.  We envisioned a darkish room with lots of wooden shelves built in and a cozy seating nook.  The former doctor's office  waiting room at the front of the house seemed perfect.  The leaded glass window added some elegance for the room.  We had it all planned, right down to the dark wood ceiling.  

We used the front half of the living room as a dining room.   This wasn't a perfect solution because it is a long ways from the kitchen, but the table fit there.  Then, we inherited a dining room suite and we realized that though we might not use it as such, the house really should have a formal dining room.  At this point, it isn't obvious which room was the original dining room in the house.  The rooms have been repurposed over the years so it is not immediately clear if our kitchen was the original kitchen.  If it was, there isn't a candidate for the dining room immediately contiguous.  Possibly, the room that will become the downstairs guest bedroom was the dining room, but by the time we got the house which had, by then, had 3 apartments carved out of it, that large room contained just a toilet and evidence of a tub and sink.  

We decided that the former doctor's office waiting room/library should be the dining room.  This wasn't a perfect solution and would still require carrying food down the hallway, but it would fit the inherited dining room suite.   We still have lots of books, so we still had a need for a library.  We also have an odd area with 5 doorways as you enter the house from the back porch.  There are too many travel lanes here to place much furniture, but we could fill the walls with bookshelves.  So that room has become our library and is mostly completed and filled with books.

Throughout this period, our working office with desks and computers has remained just off of the kitchen.  The more we thought about it and what in the world we were going to do with all that furniture, we realized that the office should become the dining room.   The kitchen is right there and the room is big enough and bright enough to withstand the heaviness of the furniture.  That means that the doctor's office waiting room/library/dining room would become the office.  

Now this, finally makes perfect sense!  The old doctor's office has its own exterior door and can be shut off from the rest of the house so as we move towards our goal of self-employment we could actually see clients here.  The room is large enough for our drawing tables, desks, and other office stuff with nice natural light and the leaded glass window for inspiration.  We spent Sunday working on this great rearrangement.  From a room packed to the gills with furniture and "stuff", there's now room to roll out a rug in the middle of the doctor's office waiting room/library/dining room/office floor.  Of course now we've got to paint so the room is office color instead of library color, but we're getting there!   

Check One Task Off the (Long) List!

Not to dwell on (or in!) the attic, but we finished the insulation!!  We'd like to think we did such a great job that the gas company will be paying us this year, but that's probably just a bit optimistic.  It is good to have a clean attic with clean and fluffy insulation to keep our heat in the house.  We've got our plywood laid out up there to store Christmas decorations and such, so we're already using the vast storage space that it is for now.

While we were up there, not only did we have the chance to remove the insulation, but also the old knob and tube wiring and other unused fixtures.  One of our first tasks before we ever moved into the house was to rewire.  So all of the old wiring had been cut, but at that time, the only access to the attic was through a very small hatch into a very dirty space so the knobs and tubes remained up there.  Another removal was what was probably the ballast tank for the radiator system.  It's still up there because it's too big to get down, but also because it's pretty cool with all of the rivets that hold it together.  It's a great design piece that we'll find some use for.

We were hoping to find a million dollars hidden in the attic.  No such luck, but we did find a few interesting things that we'll incorporate into a "museum" case in the wall when we finish the space.  Our most recent finds were an envelope postmarked December 1913 - the year the house was built and a christening dress.  The dress was in perfect shape, just dirty from being under the insulation.  It's nothing fancy, but does have some embroidery on the yoke.  I'm thinking we could come up with a gothic novel about how the dress found its way up there, but then I might get a little nervous when I hear normal creaks from above!

We've Got Bats in the Belfry!

Some people would say we have bats in the belfry for rehabilitating our old house, but those aren't the bats of which I speak.  Our sanity aside, the bat (I think just one) is in our attic.  

We spent the weekend on our ongoing task of replacing the old, dirty, blown-in fiberglass insulation in our attic.  Suited up against the dust and fiberglass pieces that can cause itchiness if touched and respiratory problems if inhaled, we have a system where one of us crawls into the depths of the attic corners and fills plastic kitty-litter containers with the insulation and hands it back to the other for disposal in a trash bag.  Once most of the insulation has been removed, a Shop Vac is used to get rid of the remaining pieces and accumulated dust.  We clean out as many of the cavities as we can before back and knees protest too much then fill smaller holes with spray insulation foam and the cavities with fiberglass bats (not flying bats!).  

There's a blog posting for another time about the environmental pros and cons of different types of insulation, but I'll be perfectly honest - we got a quote for spray foam and decided that we'd go with fiberglass for now.  Our attic space will one day be an amazing room.  It has a dormer for light and is essentially a big square space with high ceilings throughout most of it and plenty of place for storage where knee walls will be placed one day.  Today, however, it is just the attic and if we can improve the energy efficiency up there, that will lower our heating bills.  One day, when we turn that into a room in the house, we will want to spray foam the ceiling/roof and we can easily remove the fiberglass bats if we so choose.

We are almost done with replacing the attic insulation and I was admiring our work, thinking about what a great space the attic will be one day, mentally constructing the knees walls and all the storage they will provide, calculating how long it will take to finish the job, congratulating ourselves on not having signs of creatures in the attic, and measuring and cutting the insulation to be installed when...I thought I saw something.  Daylight savings time started on Sunday, so it was starting to get dark outside, though it was plenty light in the attic from our shop lights, so I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.  

Then frrrrrrr...whiz...ack!  It was a bat.  Circling the center of the attic where I was cutting the insulation.  I was out of there so fast that I was halfway down the attic ladder when I realized that I ought to turn around or I'd end up on my face in the hallway!  My poor husband was still up there, stuck in the far corner of the attic and I stopped to think..."Gosh, I hope he isn't stuck back there!"  Well, down he came soon after and we abandoned ship for the night.  We'll wait for a sunny day to go back up and finish the insulation!