c1711 House Renovation

[bgreenb]

I doubt anyone noticed because I'm not that special, but I disappeared from the forum for the second half of last year and first few months of this year.  Part of it was that the firewall in my office made it harder to participate, but the bigger reason is that almost all of my free time was spent renovating a 305 year old house.  I use the word "renovate" intentionally, to distinguish what I did from what @Tom King does, which is preservation.  The house is about a mile from my own house, I drive by it every day on the way to and from work.  It's been on and off the market and exchanged hands a few times through various foreclosure auctions over the last few years, and was in a state of *significant* disrepair.  The house was built on a fieldstone foundation - a "full" basement (by that I mean about 5' in height) in about half the footprint, crawlspace in the other half.  Both with just a dirt floor.  

It was framed with post and beam construction typical of the period.  About 80% of the sill was completely rotted, causing the house to settle significantly out of level.  Even more worrisome, significant parts of the floor system had rotted, and most of the first floor joists had completely separated from the (rotted) sill, and were being supported by a couple of 2x6's on the flat, with a couple of 4x4's underneath.  When I saw that, I backed out of the basement...slowly...and didn't return again until it was properly supported by cribbing.  

It had four fireplaces - three downstairs, one upstairs, again typical of the period.  All were in various states of crumbling masonry.  The walls were all plaster and lath, which lots of cracking and crumbling from years of settling.  Windows were actually in half decent shape, looked like they had been replaced sometime in the late 90s, judging from the aluminum balances.  The electrical had been updated at some point to 200 amp service with proper wiring, but most of it didn't work, likely from animals chewing through romex.  The house had been vacant of humans for a couple of years, so various other mammals moved right in.  The copper plumbing had all been ripped out by thieves, unsurprisingly.  

So yeah, it was a major project.  The price I paid for it was below what you would pay for raw land of the same size, so I entertained the idea of bulldozing and starting anew.  But after running numbers it appeared that would be more costly a proposition, especially when taking into account the local demo delay bylaw, which holds that if you own a property of historical significance (we have MANY in my town), you cannot demolish it until you've held the property for a year, obviously to discourage developers from coming in and tearing down all the old houses.  So I decided to renovate the house in place.  Make no mistake:  my goal was to make money here.  I wanted to keep as much of the original character as I could, but that concern was secondary to profit.  

Anyway, the project is finished, so I thought I'd document some of it here.  The project overall is far from fine woodworking, but there were some aspects that allowed me to use my skills, so hopefully some here will be interested in those.  If this isn't the proper place for this thread and the mods think it belongs "off topic", no worries and feel free to move it there.

To start off, here are some "before" pics.  Most of these are from the for sale listing when I bought it...and they waaaaay overstate the condition it was in.  Rest assured that it looked far far worse by the time it got to me, as you'll see in some of the forthcoming pics.  Unfortunately I was so busy working that I didn't get a ton of "before" pics, but I included one of them here. 

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy.

 

 

 

[Alan G]

That looks like it is going to be a fun project. Thanks for sharing. I really love all these home building/Reno journals!

[davewyo]

Is that a chest of drawers built into the plaster wall?

[bgreenb]

1 minute ago, davewyo said:

Is that a chest of drawers built into the plaster wall?

Yup - pretty common around here when you have a bungalow or cape style home - it's a way to make use of the dead space in eves.  I grew up in a bungalow built around 1930 and each upstairs bedroom had at least one set of drawers built into the wall.  

[Eric.]

I was hoping you'd journal this in more detail.  Pretty incredible transformation that house went through.

[davewyo]

Interesting. I grew up in Rhode Island and I don't recall seeing that before.

I understand that it is a clever use of otherwise "dead" space, but I'm not a big fan of the look.

Overall, it looks like a nice little house.

Totally off subject but have you ever been to Toscanini's in Cambridge? Very good ice cream.

[bgreenb]

The first and most important step was repairing the structure underneath the house.  The foundation was in very good shape and really only needed to be parge coated.  But as I said, the sill was completely rotted about 85% of the way around the house, and most of the floor system had rotted or at least separated from the sill.  This part was above my pay grade, so I called in the professionals.  There are several contractors in my area who specialize in antique houses (makes sense, given how many there are), and several of those contractors specifically deal in assessing and rebuilding structure.  

They started with the sill, but the first thing they had to do was make sure to shore up the house so that it wouldn't collapse or move significantly when they started taking out existing structure.  They nailed a bunch of shoring posts at 45* angles into the sides of the house and then into the ground to absorb the lateral forces and then installed cribbing in the basement and crawlspace under all the critical areas.

They then set about replacing the sill.  They worked their way around the house, replacing it with PT stock, then repacking the fieldstone foundation underneath with structural mortar.  When there were sections that were still useable, they joined the new sill to the old with a lap joint.

Once the sills were stable, they moved on to the corner posts.  There were two that needed some repair.  To remind you, the house is post and beam construction.  So if you picture about a 30'x40' rectangle, there are six structural posts.  One at each corner, and then one each about halfway down the short side.  Then there were three structural "summer beams" that ran all the way across the 40' length.  The second floor floor system spanned the space between each of the three summer beams.  Hopefully that's clear enough because I don't have any great pictures of that.  Anyway, they repaired the corner posts with scarf joints:

Then they applied 1x PT stock as sheathing over the sill and post.  The original sheathing on the house was roughly 1" thick solid pine, which was in great shape other than the lower rotted areas.  The concrete form you see was for a concrete apron they would apply around the entire house to direct water away from the foundation.  Fairly common in my area for old houses built right on the ground.

Once the sills and posts were repaired, they could move on to the floor system.  This was really cool.  The floor joists are literally just rough sawn logs.  Many still had bark on them.  They were originally mortised or half lapped into the sills.  What these guys did is attach a ledger to the new sills that was notched to receive the existing joists, and then in between the existing joists they hung new 4x6 PT joists with standard simpson hangers.  This allowed for proper structural spacing to meet current code.

There was the remaining issue of proper support for the center summer beam, since there is no sill underneath it to carry the load into the earth.  They installed a new beam at ground level made up of 5 laminated PT 2x10 mortised into the sill at either end and supported at three different points by a CMU pier (in the crawlspace) and lally columns (in the full basement part).  They also poured (by hand!) a concrete floor in the basement to help with some of the moisture issues.

 

 

They did a few other odds and ends, but at this point the structure underneath the house was rock solid, and the project could proceed to dealing with everything above ground.  

[bgreenb]

8 minutes ago, davewyo said:

I understand that it is a clever use of otherwise "dead" space, but I'm not a big fan of the look.

Oh me neither, believe me

9 minutes ago, davewyo said:

Totally off subject but have you ever been to Toscanini's in Cambridge? Very good ice cream.

Many, many times  I went to Harvard so that was my neighborhood ice cream joint for four years.  Unfortunately that location closed a couple years after I graduated.  The only location remaining is in central square.  But yes, very very good ice cream.

[Eric.]

How did they go about cutting the half-laps/scarfs in the existing sill and posts?  Sawzall and skilled hands?

[bgreenb]

13 minutes ago, Eric. said:

How did they go about cutting the half-laps/scarfs in the existing sill and posts?  Sawzall and skilled hands?

Yup.  Combination sawzall, chisels, handsaws, and a multitool.

[Woodenskye]

Wow, this is a massive undertaking.  Hopefully you make or made out in the end. 

[bgreenb]

5 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

Yup.  Combination sawzall, chisels, handsaws, and a multitool.

I should add that people aren't kidding when they talk about how hard old growth pine is.  Whenever someone told me that I always rolled my eyes a little thinking to myself "yeah sure...but it's still pine."  Naive, I was.  

No idea what the janka numbers are, but I can tell you that the working characteristics were much closer to oak than to pine.  

[Eric.]

I think age has a hardening effect on it as well.  My dad's house was only post-war old, and I doubt the lumber used on its construction was truly old growth...but it was still hard as rock.

[Guest]

Off to a fast start.  How long will it take you to finish?  

 

[bgreenb]

5 minutes ago, Mike. said:

Off to a fast start.  How long will it take you to finish?  

 

I'd imagine I'll be done by Friday if I really stretch it out for the benefit of the forum narration.

[bgreenb]

Next up was demo.  A lot of demo.  A lot a lot a lot of demo.  And demo....sucks.  And I am one man.  My brother in law came down and helped me for a full day, but other than that I gutted this entire house by myself.  Don't wanna hurt my arm patting myself on the back, but doing this last July in 90 degree new england heat wasn't fun.  Did I mention demo sucks, and there was a lot of it?

Here's a pic after the first few sledgehammer swings:

 

And here's after a few more:

The "studs" under the center summer beam are about 1.5" thick by 8" wide slabs of pine that are nailed into the beam.  My new floorplan involved some wide openings in that center wall, so I removed all the studs and put in a couple of shoring posts.  This picture gives a better idea of the structure.  THe second floor floor system consists of those 6x7" beams running front to back and half lapped into the central summer beam (and the other ends lapped into the front and rear summer beams).

The studs on the exterior walls were about 3"x3" and each one was individually mortised into the beam above it, then toe nailed into the new sills.  

 

Found some cool stuff in the walls, like these old beer and whiskey bottles:

And this skull:

 

And this 1976 newspaper (funny thing was that I found this newspaper during the 2016 GOP convention 40 years after the paper was published almost to the day):

Also found that whenever they put up the plaster and lath, they decided they didn't want the posts exposed in one of the front rooms, so someone literally hacked out half of the post.  

 

Here's a video I shot after my first day of demo:

Once the first floor was done, I moved upstairs, and had my first fairly major setback that completely changed the course of how I was attacking this house.  I don't have any really good pictures of it, but basically whenever the owners added the shed dormer in the front (likely 50+ years ago) they did a complete hack job.  They basically just cut all of the main rafters, then framed in the dormer but didn't tie it into the ridge at all.  So the new rafters framing the dormer roof basically all sat on top of a single purloin.  Then they threw a stud wall in beneath that purloin, and that stud wall was carried by...nothing.  So the entire front half of the roof was basically unsupported.  On top of that, most of the roof sheathing was completely rotted through.  GIven all this, I'm actually shocked that the roof hadn't collapsed during the most recent winter.  

You can *kind of* see what's going on in these pics, but not really:

 

Anyway, with the second floor framing such a mess, it became clear that it would likely be more expensive to repair the existing structure in place than it would be to simply rip the whole second floor off and rebuild it.  But if I was going to rebuild the second floor, it didn't make sense to simply reframe a cape style second floor - might as well go up a bit to a full height second floor and turn it into a colonial, which would allow me to add a bedroom (the existing septic was in good shape and spec'd for four beds) and some additional living area.  So I decided to make lemonade with the lemon framing.  After some back and forth with the historical commission and my architect, we decided on this design:

More to come, stay tuned.

[Eric.]

I had to look up "summer beam"...that was a new one on me:

"The word summer derived from sumpter or French sommier, “a pack horse“, meaning “bearing great burden or weight."

 

That must have been a pretty queasy feeling when you realized you had to completely rebuild half of the house.  Damn.

[bgreenb]

6 minutes ago, Eric. said:

 

That must have been a pretty queasy feeling when you realized you had to completely rebuild half of the house.  Damn.

Yup. Completely rebuild half...and essentially rebuild about 90% of the other half. Nooooot exactly what I signed up for. But as you well know...the only way through it is through it. 

[..Kev]

I saw this thread earlier while at work but, couldn't see the pictures because of the refinery's fire wall.  I'm glad I came back and checked out this thread!  I'm really looking forward to watching this transformation!  Great work so far!

[davewyo]

9 hours ago, bgreenb said:

I'd imagine I'll be done by Friday if I really stretch it out for the benefit of the forum narration.

[Woodenskye]

What kind of skull was that?  I also share your thoughts on demo.

[bgreenb]

7 minutes ago, Woodenskye said:

What kind of skull was that?  I also share your thoughts on demo.

I would guess some kind of small mammal like a squirrel or something. It's too big to be a mouse or rat. We have a ton of fisher cats around here but it seems too small for that. Maybe a fox?

[Llama]

How did you decide to restore this house? (instead of another one)

At which point(s) did you say, F it! This sucks!!??

Have you learned any ways to protect you/your investment/profit on the (possibly) next one with what you have learned?

 

[Coop]

That is a pretty cool restoration/remodel/rebuild job. In your first post, you mentioned that your ambition was to make money off of the project. Is that still in the foreseeable future? 

[shaneymack]

Wow what a heck of a job. Im in construction and would not want to do this. You my friend, have big steel balls.

 

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