17?? house Job

[Tom King]

Dry stacked originally.  Any mortar you see between stones is portland cement mortar added in the 20th Century. It had all tumbled down at some point, and put back piecemeal.  You can see some lime mortar on the outside of those corner stones.  They had been used somewhere else before they were put in place to hold that corner up.  All the original stones are still in a tumbled down jumble inside the basement.

Those aren't "quality" jacks.  I've left too many of them inside concrete pours (on purpose) before to buy the high priced ones.  These were all less than 40 buck jacks.  

[Tpt life]

10 minutes ago, Tom King said:

Those aren't "quality" jacks.  I've left too many of them inside concrete pours (on purpose) before to buy the high priced ones.  These were all less than 40 buck jacks.  

Let me amend. By quality I meant I do not see oil stains everywhere. 

[Tom King]

These are the new ones on this job:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/400990012038?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Those two nearest the corner are at least 15 years old, and probably cost less than 30 bucks each back then.

[Tom King]

Yesterday, we pulled a string, and jacked that back wall into a straight line.  The corner needs to go up 3-3/4" to get the back wall level.  The whole thing might have to go up some more, but we'll figure that out as we go around the other sides.

The sill from the back doorway, and to the left is offering no support to the studs.  My original plan was to get the whole house up level, and then bolt the 4x6 legs to every stud.  Those studs with no longer enough sill to mortise into are too floppy to jump to the bolting on legs stage.  We're going to rebuild the sill before we go any farther so everything can be tied together well.

[Tom King]

I had other stuff to do for a while, but we got back to this last week.  

The first picture shows a treated band, inside the old sill remnants, that is holding up the ends of the floor joists.  That floor had collasped down to the ground, and some years ago we hewed another center beam, and raised the floor back up so it could be walked on.  This picture shows what we had to work with after we pulled out most of the termite eaten sill parts.

The second picture is after several more layers of treated 2x's were added back to where we had some good wood to work with in the intersecting sill under the end wall.  That end wall sill was much fatter than the back sill, and at this point we had enough good wood to tie into.  All the old parts were thoroughly soaked with Borate before we wrap it back up.

Third picture shows a larger view.

Fourth picture shows the other end of that section, with the bad part cut out of the original sill to the point that we had something good enough to tie to

The last picture is just a larger view.

As we built out more layers of treated 2x's for that section, we had to jack each stud up, and jack each layer of new boards up into place.  That section alone took several days work.  The new sill replacement there is 9 layers of 10" tall 2x treated lumber tied together with 15 pounds of 3-1/2" Deckmate screws.  

None of the treated wood will be seen after the stone foundation is rebuilt.

We'll start the other end of that back sill tomorrow, and I'm hoping to save a layer of the original part that you can see in the basement, so it will look like nothing has been repaired when we get finished.

[Tom King]

As we built  out the multiple layers of treated 2x's, that stone they were sitting on in the corner had a high lump on it.   Rather than cutting each 2x to fit (since they had to be slid in behind that tenon anyway), I leveled off the top of the stone with a bush hammer.  The next layers of 2x's went all the way to the end, and gave support under the shoulders of the corner post tenon.

The stone wall that you can see inside the basement, under the end wall, in one of the other pictures, was rebuilt mid 20th Century.  It wasn't done to match the old work, being mortared with Portland cement mortar, but it's in good enough shape to leave, and this corner stone will not be replaced in the process of rebuilding all the outside foundation walls.

[Tpt life]

Great stuff Tom. 

[wdwerker]

I got a small pile of 1/2" steel plate scraps real cheap and use those to keep the jack piston from burying its self in old wood. 

Thanks for taking us along for the ride. I learn a lot from your posts.

[Tom King]

If you look close you can see all manner of steel scraps for just the purpose that Steve said.  One is even a hook out of my box blade that you can see in the last picture on the first page of this thread.  We finished building out that whole section of sill on Friday, but I forgot to take any more pictures.  I'll get some tomorrow.

[Tom King]

On to the next section of that same sill.  There was a short part with no termite damage, so we skipped over that to the next part.  This section has 3 inches of solid wood left on the inside.  I put a bunch of strings on the outside plane of the sill, put a duct tape flag on long drill bits, and drilled several hundred holes to indicate the proper depth as we spent almost two and a half days chiseling off the bad 10 inches.

You may have seen the other thread I started about drawboring.  Getting rid of the termite damaged outer 10 inches uncovered that tenon and drawbored peg.

More pictures coming, but I took these with my cellphone, and it's taking forever to transfer them to the computer.  We have poor cellphone coverage in the house.

You can see the new treated wood to Mike's left that we did last week.  Once we get that whole sill repaired, so the studs that were just hanging in the air, with nothing holding them up will have support under them, we can start jacking the house back up to proper level.

 

[Tom King]

Some more pictures.  First one is the first section after it's done.

Second picture is what we had to start with on the next 90" long section that needed some help.

Third is after removing 10" off of the outside of the sill to get down to solid wood.  After I cut that sill back to goo wood, it left the center of the tree in view.  I counted 126 growth rings from the tree center out to the lower corner in 6-1/2"-Southern Long Leaf Heart Pine.

Fourth is with the first treated 2x layer added.

Fifth is that section done after four days of work.  We had to jack every 2x board into place to give good support to the studs above that had not had anything under them for a LONG time.

Sixth is the rotten end of the sill.   There is barely enough wood left to hold the corner up, but not enough for heavy jacking.  I chainsaw carved out a section to put in a vertical piece of treated 4x6. The sill is solid once it gets past the corner post above it.   We were planning to start jacking the house this afternoon, but were rained out.  It'll go up Monday morning if we have good luck with weather.

[Tom King]

We started jacking the back of the house up earlier this week.  It went up with no complaining, but the center beam under the floor also needed to go up along with it.  We got all set up with more jacks, started jacking the whole thing up, but the wall above the beam didn't move along with the floor, so we stopped, and did some probing.

The main support post in the center of the house is also eaten up at the bottom by termites.

I was sidetracked for a couple of days on other stuff, and we tore into the wall where the post is yesterday afternoon.  Fortunately, the damage is just to the one post.  We'll get this sorted out next week.  I have pictures somewhere else of the door casing that also had termite damage there, so didn't take more pictures before we took that off.   These pictures are after that side of the jamb, and casing came off.  I'll have to make replacement parts for the casing, and jamb, because termites had also eaten most of those.  This post was on top of the beam we replaced years ago.

There are several theories about why they filled walls up with brick.   I'm pretty sure my theory is the correct one:  Bricks were fired on site.  When they clumped the brick to build the kiln, there were always a lot of bricks around the outside layers of the clump that never could get hot enough to become hard.  These are commonly called "interior" bricks.  I'm pretty sure they would have rather not ever have produced any of these "interior" bricks, but always ended up with some anyway.  They needed to do something with them, so they filled the walls up with them.  They probably helped a little bit with insulation, but mainly saved the trouble of having to haul them away.  We will save the whole ones, and refire them to a higher temperature, making bricks that we can use to fix the chimneys.

That section of wainscoting is in fine shape, and came off with no damage, to be replaced after we fix that post.

The floor is all in fine shape.  It just needs to be evened back up, which I hope to do with the jacking process.

Sheetrock was added to the two front rooms in the mid 20th Century.   They did us a favor by tearing out all the plaster, so it will save us a dirty job.  The plaster in the whole house is poorly done, and in too poor condition to save.   We'll redo it properly using materials like they used originally, but there's a LOT of work to do before we get to that point.

 

[Tom King]

We got back to work on that post today, after a few days of catching up at home over the 4th.  

I keep an old electric chainsaw (1974 Craftsman I bought new, and have never been into, even for the switch), that I run a dry chain on for working inside of these old houses.  I had to sharpen it twice, once I got into the hard Heart Pine.  I cut away enough of the termite eaten stuff to leave plenty of good wood to fasten to. Clean release duct tape gaiters keep chips out of my shoes, even though the left one has creeped up in the picture.

Interesting that the wainscotting has flat panels that show in the rooms, and crudely made raised panel edges on the inside.  The tapered edges were made with hatchets, and planes.

We're saving all the whole bricks we take out of the walls to refire to a higher temperature for brick repairs needed on the outside.

There is a summer beam under the wall that we opened up.   The end, and top of it are termite eaten over, not quite to the diagonal brace.  We spent more time cleaning up today than anything else.   Tomorrow, I'll start chiseling the bad stuff off the top of that summer beam.  Fortunately, it's sitting on top of a brick wall in the basement, so didn't fall down when the main beam did.

The good beam you see the top of, with my left toe over it, under the perpendicular wall, is the new one we hewed, and installed a few years ago.  In the process of jacking the house, that center beam needed to go up some, and when we started jacking it, the wall above didn't move.   It'll be ready to move in another couple of days work. 

I didn't get a good picture of what I left up in the wall with the chainsaw carving. You can see the back edge of what's left of it in the second picture, down to about the top of the wainscotting in the other room, and the what's left of the part in the perpendicular wall to the upper left that still has a few pieces of lath nailed to it.   It was originally hewed in one piece, like corner posts were then.  I'll try to remember to get a better one tomorrow.

 

Here's the picture I forgot to take.  It shows what was left of that corner post after I took it down enough to find good wood to tie a repair into.

 

[Tom King]

Sidetracked again, but back to it this week.   We have it on legs now.  The legs are 4x6's.  They sit on a 6x6 on the ground right outside the foundation wall.  The 4x6 is cut with some taper on the top 30 inches so the legs can angle out to sit on the 6x6, and have a 2 inch deep ledge under the sill.  I cut opposing wedges to seat the bottom of the legs down hard onto the 6x6, and then holes were drilled through the studs for grade 5   5/8" bolts.   The only grade 5 bolts that size that I could find were a little too long, so 2x4, and oak 1x pieces make spacers.  The wedges would lift the section enough to lighten the load on the nearest jack, so I knew it was holding, before we drilled the holes.

Miter cuts on bottom of legs were cut with a Makita 16-5/16" circular saw.  Top taper cut on 24" Centauro bandsaw.

Nothing budged when we took the jacks out.

We had to remove most of the stones, to give enough room for the leg to go under the 2" for the ledge.

Now the digging can begin in the basement for the new footings, but I think I'm going to go do some inside work until this Fall.   97 here today in the shade.

The generator is on the stand so I can slide it in and out of the truck without doing any lifting.

I left that big stone at the corner because I like it in that location.  We just levered it back out of the way.  After the inner half of the new stone basement walls are supporting the sill, we'll take the legs off, dig and pour the outside footings.  After the legs are off, we'll just roll that big stone to the outside, and after the footings are poured, it'll get rolled right back into that position.  It weighs several hundred pounds, so no need to move it farther than we have to.

 

[Tom King]

Earlier in the week, as we were leveling up the center support beam under the post that needs repair,  I found that the center of the house was still too high.  The whole house, and two chimneys had settled a couple of inches, but the interior basement walls had not.  It was a pretty easy fix.  We jacked the beams up, and removed the last course of half bricks, and it settled back down to be level enough.

You can see the hump under the beam in this picture, and the half height course of bricks.  The whitewashed wall you see in the background got the same treatment-was able to jack that one in the window opening that you see.

The whole house is at a nice flat, level plane now.

 

[Tom King]

We had a cloudy morning a few days ago, so I fixed the worst of the leaking roof edges.  Before this group found out about me, they had some other carpenters wrap the house up with OSB, and some sort of cheap housewrap.  The OSB extended past the little bit of overhang that the old tin roof has, so they nailed on aluminum flashing with roofing tacks,and folded it over the edges.  Of course, the roofing tacks all leaked-some worse than others.

I made a roofing ladder out of treated material that I can just leave up there, since there will be more work to do over who knows how long of a period.

They would have been better off not putting anything on the house, but didn't know better.  Now, they know to ask me first, and not go for fast and cheap any more.

I need to recover all four edges, but this was the worst one, and I'm going to wait until late September, at the earliest, to redo the other edges.  I found one of the original Cypress shingles in the attic of this house some years back.  After it's sitting on a good foundation, the next job will be a Cypress shingle roof, so this metal is just temporary.

It's nice having a roof "ladder" with level step/seats to work off of.  I make the tops out of plywood (treated here, for long term use in place) with a rounded design that will jump over the ridge when upside down.  This one is made from 5/4 decking boards with dadoed joints.

I just space the steps however it works out close to 32" apart, with one close to the bottom, and one close to the top.  You can take your time, with no stress to hang on with one hand.  It's hard to do good work when you are not comfortable, and easy if you are.  

I think the lower edges of this roof are 23 feet off the ground.  Safety ropes always used.

 

[Tom King]

I rebuilt that center support post.  I'm not sure if you will be able to tell much from the pictures.

These 1780 walls have studs that are 4-1/4" thick.   I keep treated lumber, and yellow pine boards drying for years for such uses.  The newest boards on the top of the pile said 2012.  They're stored on a high rack under a tin roof in one of my sheds, so it's good, and dry this time of year.

The beam under the wall that you see in the pictures had the left end eaten by termites where it intersected the center beam that we replaced that had been completely termite demolished.  It's sitting on top of a brick wall in the basement (the one you can see in previous pictures with whitewash on it), so it has good support under the good part of the beam that's left.  We saturated the old beam underneath with boiling water with Borax in it, before installing the new plate/beam.  The dark color is from the soaking.

I used one of my 2012 dry 6x6 timbers to cut a 4-1/4" wide piece to span from on top of the new beam, over onto the solid part of the partially bad beam.  It fits against the diagonal brace, and stops where the walls intersect at the door jamb.  In other words, the sole plate is 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 (or a little less from jointer straightening), and also serves as a support beam, on top of other support beams.

Third picture is with the two studs installed.   They had tenons on the bottom ends, but I just cut them to fit back in their original positions, and screwed them to the Plate/beam.  They didn't even have any nails from the wainscoting in them, and one rosehead hand forged nail in the center of the top.  Those nails were just like new.  I saved the nails, and used screws.

The corner post, that also backs the jamb, is pieced up from other years old dry lumber.   Rather than using all wide stuff, and running it down to 4-1/4", I used 2x4's staggered, with one edge straightened on a jointer.  There is one piece that is 4-1/4 backing up the jamb position.

This spot needed a little jacking, but nothing like the back wall.  With the beam underneath now level, we just jacked it until the jamb head was level.

 

[Coop]

Really cool stuff Tom. It's amazing how they built these buildings back then. Thanks for the updates.

[Tom King]

Before this one, I had always thought that they way overdid the diagonal bracing.  In this case, the diagonal braces were what kept the house from falling down.  On the back wall, and this interior wall, the diagonal braces were carrying All the load.

[Bankstick]

Interesting thread.  I lived in a very small town in central KY while a pastor.  Another church bought the adjoining property and allowed the volunteer fire department to practice on the house.  When I asked the pastor why they didn't tear it down and sell the material, he said they did that on another house.  The people who tore down the house never came back to clean up the mess.  Anyway, when they took the wood siding off, the sheathing was 1X12 poplar boards set at an angle!  It was a shame to see the house burned and then bulldozed!

Look forward to seeing the project develop.

[prov163]

They got married a year after the start of the Revolutionary War. Too cool!  Must be fun working on something that old. Challenging but fun. 

[Tom King]

Yes, they spent the Winter of  '77/'78 in that single room house, that the big house was added onto later in 1780.  I don't know exactly what they had for Christmas dinner in '77, but I expect they enjoyed it very much more than Washington's men at Valley Forge, that same Christmas, who had vinegar to go on their rice. 300 miles to the North.

edited to add:  The above history is a little bit off.   While taking down the sheetrock, put up over the wall boards sometime in the 20th Century, I discovered that the single room had been moved into place, after the big house was built.  More later on that.  Looks like they spent that Winter in the big house.

[Tom King]

Turns out that this house has more history than previously thought.  I found some very interesting architectural details, during this session, that indicate it is significantly older than previously thought.  In my books on dating houses, item number one, on the checklist is:   1)  Don't believe anything you've read about when a house was built.

Long story short, Carl Lounsbury is meeting me there a week from Monday.  He wrote my favorite books on Colonial Virginia Architecture, and has a long resume, including Senior Architectural Historian, for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.  He just retired, last year, after 35 years in that position, as well as a long list of Professorships.  He should be able to tell us when it was built, and probably even who the Undertaker was.   Back then, the person that we call a Contractor was called an Undertaker.

The brick nogging, in the walls behind the wainscotting, was for "rat proofing".  It's done on the second story the same way as the first story-only the first few feet at the bottom of the walls.  They had a Lot of soft bricks from the outside of their "kilns", so had to do something with them anyway.  

More later, but right now, I'll wait for his visit, before I post my own theories.  Everything is on hold for this job, for now.  The pictures show how I left it.  The problem back wall, and center Summer are now level, and ready to start the stone foundation rebuilding.  I haven't done much there since July, but have mostly been buying books, and doing research.

[Marmotjr]

4 hours ago, Tom King said:

Back then, the person that we call a Contractor was called an Undertaker

I'd be curious to find out hoe that term shifted to it's current meaning.  When you stop and think about it, Undertaker is a very suitable term for some one who takes on a job like this. 

[Tom King]

Language changes over time.  In the late 1500's, when English people first started coming here, there were less than a total of 400,000 people speaking English. 

 Just speculation on my part, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same guy who built houses, also got called on to build caskets.  When someone needed a casket, and the nearest store didn't have one in stock, go find the undertaker.

In reading specifications for Glebe houses, written by Vestrymen, there are all sorts of strange spellings.  A small room was called a closet,  with all sorts of spellings like it sounds, such as klosset.   Linseed oil was spelled: lindseet oyle,  lynseed olle, and mostly a different way anytime someone wrote it down.