Victorian Restoration

Our Garden Is Done

2007-07-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

Our garden is now finished. We paved the patio (herringbone pattern) with the old kitchen chimney brick from our house (it feels great to recycle as much as possible and avoid landfill). The patio is graded with two drains installed. Two feet deep along the length of the rear fence was left for a small garden (which should fill out by next year).

Garden Fence

2007-06-16T14:43:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, we hadn't planned on doing much work to the garden other than paving it with old brick. The collapse of the 3 foot high retaining wall changed all of that. The rebuilt retaining wall seen in the picture below is now complete other than the fact that it still needs to be skimmed with concrete. This new wall was an excuse to build a new fence at the back of our house. This redwood fence (6x8 feet) was purchase at Lowes for $91 a panel; it is secured to 4x4 redwood posts that are anchored to metal straps that are embedded in the concrete. The caps on top of the posts are accented in copper.

Work On The Garden

2007-06-10T10:29:00.001-07:00

The concrete retaining wall you see being built in this picture was not planned. The 3 foot high retaining wall collapsed the other day. We needed to do something urgently because it partly supported the back of our cottage behind out house (the rear of it is seen in this picture). Have you ever tried to get home depot to deliver 3 pallets of concrete mix together with rebar on the same day? I thought it would be a long shot but they came through like champs! The builders promptly poured a one foot deep concrete footing, let it dry and then started laying the concrete brick on top of it, threaded though the rebar that was poured with the footing. Once this dries, concrete will be pured inside of the hollow concrete bricks to form a very strong 3 foot wall. Once all of this is complete, we'll repave the garden using the salvage bricks we saved from our old kitchen chimney stack and leave a 2 foot wide trench along the concrete wall to fill with soil for a small garden. All of this is expected to be done in about another week.

We're Done Inside (for now)!

2007-06-10T01:09:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the delay in posting to my blog. I've been busy getting the finishing touches of the house ready for us to move in. All in all, it took about 3 weeks to get the inside of the house painted. We went for Benjamin Moore Ironclad Oil paint for all of the doors and trim -- we really like the look... really thick paint with a satin finish and no signs of any brush marks (it was sprayed on); for the wall we used Benjamin Moore latex paint. The primer for everything was Zinsser Cover Stain (oil based). We bought the lighting fixtures off of eBay; all except for the three pendants in the hall are refurbished old oil gas chandeliers. As you can see from the photos we are really using the picture rail molding; I made sure that the builders nailed the 2 inch nails into the studs so they could hold the weight of some of our pictures (the heaviest of which is 30lbs). In the kitchen, all of the appliances are Bosch except for the refrigerator which is an LG cabinet depth french door model. The kitchen cabinets are Ikea Adel Medium Brown, the counter tops are Blue Pearl Granite and the backsplash is a marble mosaic which I think ties the colors of the cabinets, the counters and the walls together well. The folding doors in front of the washer and dryer were original panel doors to the house that were cut in two. I'm very pleased how this worked out. The floors throughout the first floor are floating BR-1111 engineered Tigerwood floors (which I installed over a week). We needed to use engineered flooring because of the radiant heat; we went the floating method because of the concrete slab. They look great, however, I'm not a big fan of engineered floors (they are too soft and damage easily). In hindsight I wish I had gone with quartersawn white oak solid flooring. I understand that this wood is very stable and would have worked well with our radiant system. Oh well... you live and learn. The first floor is now done and we still have 2 more floors of the house to finish but for the time being we're done inside of the house.

Most Of The Scaffolding Is Down

2007-04-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

The painters took down the scaffolding from the East side of the house today. You can see the silver accents that were the last details to be painted. The windows on the top 2 floors will be painted once we get around to restoring the individual sashes.

Ground Floor Kitchen Cabinets Are Installed

2007-04-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

We designed the ground floor of our house as a possible rental unit down the road so we installed a separate kitchen down there. This is an Ikea Adel Medium Brown Kitchen with stainless steel appliances from Bosch. We'll install a granite counter and mosaic tile backsplash. We had originally planned to install a Bosch side-by-side refrigerator but the right side door would not be able to open fully. We plan on ordering the LG 21755 counter depth refrigerator with bottom drawer freezer in stainless steel.

Finish Interior Trim Almost Complete

2007-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

The carpenters have been busy the past week finishing up all of the interior trim (the baseboards) now that the hardwood floors are installed. In the background you can see the new arch that duplicated the pre-existing one that had to be destroyed during the foundation upgrade to the house. The plasterers still aren't finished and they have spent more than 12 hours trying to get it to look right. Each of the 3 floors of the house has the same detail so it's easy to see if they did it right.

New Windows Are In

2007-04-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

We ended up replacing all of the windows on the ground floor with new custom sash over sash laminated glass windows. We didn't install double pane, insulated windows because the climate is so temperate in the Bay area and they don't offer the physical security that laminated glass provides. There used to be bars protecting the ground floor windows and I'm happy to say that they will not be replaced. The existing sashes will be recycled upstairs as much as possible so they won't go to waste. Many of the south and east facing windows on the house are worn out.

Bathroom Is Finished

2007-04-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy month which is why I haven't posted in a while. The marble subway tile looks great in the shower, tiled to the 10 foot ceiling. You can save a great deal of money if you plan in advance. I purchased the sink, toilet and Rohl hardware all online from Homeclick.com for almost 40% off. The shower has 3 shower heads: 2 shower arms on either side of the wall and a 12" rain shower head coming down from the ceiling. I really love this shower, particularly with the radiant floor heating! Now I have to decide whether to install a 3/8" shower door or 0.5" unit.

Finish Carpentry

2007-03-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

The carpenters have been busy trimming out the inside of the house. The redwood trim corners are original to the house, the poplar trim (paler wood) is new custom milled wood to match the rest of the house. The base trim will be installed after the engineered wood floors are put down in a week or so.

Bathroom Tiling

2007-03-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

The marble subway tile has been completely installed. It took the tile guy more than 2 weeks. The walls tiled to the 10 foot ceiling frames out the shower. This shower will have a total of 3 shower heads including a 12 inch rain shower head attached to the ceiling. The next step is to order the frameless glass shower door.

New Front Entrace

2007-03-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

The previous front steps were torn down about a week ago. They weren't very well made and certainly weren't original to the house. What you are looking at in the picture is the basic framing made out of pressure treated lumber, on top of which the finished lumber will be built. The porch which was dismantled during the house lifting is also in the process of being put back together (including the two columns that frame the entrance to the porch). As a side note, the front doors were stripped by the painters with Jasco and once they are patched and the new mortise lock is installed, will be painted dark blue.

Painting Is Almost Done

2007-03-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

The plastic sheets covering the scaffold was removed a few days ago. All that remains largely is minor touch-up painting and to paint the front porch and new front steps that are being built. Once that is done the scaffold should be taken down in the next few weeks or so.

Painting The House (continued)

2007-03-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

For the past 2 months the house painters have been prepping the house for painting (the name of the painting company is Victorian Restoration). This mostly involved stripping the architectural detail with heat guns, sanding the flat areas and scraping the old dripped paint from the bottom edge of the siding. It's a pretty laborious job for 3-4 painters on a house that is about 40 feet tall (3 stories). Last week they started priming and patching the house; this week they started by spraying on the first of two coats of paint, after which they used caulk in all of the joints. The picture below shows part of the front of the house (where the scafolding hasn't been erected yet) that hasn't been touched yet. What a difference!

Tiling The Bathroom

2007-03-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

Today tiling of our 5 x 8 bathroom with mable subway tile. All 3 walls of the 3 x 5 shower will be tiled to the 10 foot ceiling; the rest of the room will be tiled to 46 inches. The work is expected to take a week to complete.

Plasterwork Is Done

2007-03-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

It took the plasterers about a week to finish mudding the walls. I was really quite impressed at their level of skill -- very little sanding was necessary to smooth the walls. The only plasterwork left is to install the medallions on the ceiling and to finish the detail on the arch seen in the picture below.

Plasterers Get To Work

2007-02-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

The day after the drywall was installed the plasterers got to work. They first taped the sheets together and then began the process of feathering out the plaster across the seams. This gradual process of building up layers of plaster will take about a week to complete.

Drywall is up

2007-02-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

I thought this day would never come! After more than nine months of work the end is finally in sight. A crew of 4 drywallers installed 4' x 12' (5/8" thick) drywall throughout the first floor of my house. It took the crew about 9 hours to finish the work and they made it look so easy; each of the sheets of drywall easily weighed more than any single one of installers.

Insulating the House

2007-02-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

We're about a week before sheetrock goes up and the builders have started to fill the walls with R-13 fiberglass insulation. The exterior walls will need to layers of this insulation because they are now almost twice as thick as they used to be to account for the additional thickness of the new concrete sills the house is now bolted onto. This insulation should make a huge difference to the ambient temperature in the house (it has always been cold, in part because it's north facing, but also given the fact that the house has never been insulated before).

New Siding Is Up

2007-02-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

The carpenters finished installing the rear siding on the back of the house. When the rear deck was removed several months back the siding on the rear of the house was in such bad condition that we decided to reside the back of the house at no minor expense. Although the siding was purchased "off the rack" the angle of the slope on the new siding didn't match that of the existing siding of the house. The carpenters had to order a custom router bit and re-ripped the sloped side on each of the new boards. These boards were then touched up with primer on all four sides as necessary and allowed to dry before being installed. In the picture, you can also see our new Anderson outswing french doors that were installed; these doors are vinyl clad on the exterior for low maintenance and real wood on the inside. Very nice indeed.

Painting The House

2007-02-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

Our whitewashed house appears not to have been painted in quite some time. The paint (particularly on the southern exposure -- the rear of the house) was peeling badly. To complicate matters the house had been painted (badly) quite a number of times and the paint was thick, obscuring a lot of the original ornate detail of the house. The painters erected scafolding around the house and for the past 3 weeks stripped pratically the entire rear exposure which was all flat siding with not much detail and have started stripping the detail on the eastern side of the house. Most of the detail is on the front (north) of the house and this will take the bulk of their time to strip. Plastic sheets have been wrapped around the scafold and on the ground around the house to contain the lead paint and to facilitate clean-up.

Structured Cabling

2007-01-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

The open framing on the ground floor provided an excellent opportunity to install structured cabling. After some deliberating between the choices of CAT-5E and CAT-6 we decided on the former despite it's greater expense because of its substantially faster capacity. Each run consists of 2 CAT-6 cables and 2 RG-6 coaxial cables. Deciding on where to place the runs to each room was a bit of a challenge; in the end we decided on two runs per room, withe each one diagonally opposite from the other.

More Seismic Upgrades

2007-01-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

The carpenters have been busy installing the shear walls throughout the ground floor. The shear walls will provide a great deal of lateral strength in the case of a major earthquake. The plywood used is particularly strong (it's expensive at more than $80 per sheet).

Getting Started On The Electrical

2007-01-20T19:18:00.000-08:00

We're in the process of upgrading the old knob and tube wiring to the house. We decided to install a 200 amp service panel split up with a 100 amps for the first floor, a 100 amps for the top two floors and 30 amps for outside lighting. We've designed the electrical and plumbing systems so that the first floor unit is on a completely separate system from the rest of the house so as to be able to rent it out if we decide to.

Roughing In The Plumbing

2007-01-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

I've been out of town for more than 3 weeks and a lot has been done in my absence. The plumbers have just about finished roughing in the plumbing for the downstairs bathroom, kitchen and new on-demand hot water boiler. They are now extending the drain, gas and water pipes to the rest of the house (the top two floors.