c1711 House Renovation


bgreenb

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7 minutes ago, Eric. said:

:o

Wow.  That's where a lesser man cuts his losses and tucks tail.  Like I would.

As recommended by several people far more experienced than myself. And their words were gasoline on the fire under my ass :)

 

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18 minutes ago, Eric. said:

The hand-hewing on those beams.  OMG

This is an awesome journal.

Yeah it was a cool feeling taking this house apart and just seeing all the cool construction techniques, tool marks, etc. It absolutely blew my mind how much work was involved in building a house 300 years ago, just thinking about all that work minus electricity. And they didn't even have a set of shaptons and an MK2 to sharpen their chisels and plane irons!!

But then again every time I thought "how did they ever finish this?" it then occurred to me that 1) it's not like they had iPhones to play on all day or tv to watch and 2) it must have been a powerful motivator "if I don't finish this house by winter me and my family will freeze to death."

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Just now, Tom King said:

I like the fireplace a lot.  Is the crane original?

Yeah the sheer size of the main fireplace is just unbelievable. The beehive oven is still intact too.  

unfortunately the crane was nowhere to be found. I assume it was lost sometime over the years (centuries). The original mount is still intact in the masonry, and there is an antique restoration place a couple towns over where I was able to get a crane from the same period. 

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Why didn't you sister the floor joists to level up the floor?  I'm sure you must have had a reason, but I can't figure out the reason for the wedges.

The crane looks good from here.

I'd really like to see some up close pictures of the oven.  Is it inside the firebox, or beside one?  I have a job coming up building a reproduction 18th Century kitchen from scratch, and have been looking at all the old ones I can find.  We have a very unusual crane that came out of a 17th Century German Inn that burned down, but that's the only part we are starting with.

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9 hours ago, Tom King said:

Why didn't you sister the floor joists to level up the floor?  I'm sure you must have had a reason, but I can't figure out the reason for the wedges.

The crane looks good from here.

I'd really like to see some up close pictures of the oven.  Is it inside the firebox, or beside one?  I have a job coming up building a reproduction 18th Century kitchen from scratch, and have been looking at all the old ones I can find.  We have a very unusual crane that came out of a 17th Century German Inn that burned down, but that's the only part we are starting with.

Good point about sistering the joists - I should've mentioned that in my post. I did in fact sister joists to the new PT joists that had been installed as part of the structural fixes, but the problem was that all the original joists were rough hand hewn timber that was far too irregular to sister to. Maybe I could've through bolted them or something?  But I thought the best and safest way would be to cut their wedges for those and then sister to the new straight joists. So my method was to get each sheet level using the wedges, then bring a sister joists underneath and just press it against the (now level) subfloor and nail it off. Probably could've done that same process in reverse but it seemed easier to let the wedges dictate the level instead of vice versa. 

Here are some pics of the beehive oven that I took this morning. Let me know if you'd like any specific angles or details. 

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6CA653D1-B454-42C0-9AE7-9C7DA5A2E5F1_zps

5B7B585A-E9BC-40DE-88A6-F080F08D8A41_zps

 

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Thanks a lot!   I see that the floor has been replaced at some point, but it would be kind of hard to mop that out between heating it with the fire, and putting food in it.  I think if you wanted to use it, some modern fire clay mortar to flush up the joints should work okay.

I would expect that steel lintel to be just a flat piece rather than an angle, but that's just a guess.

Do you know if it has its own flue, or shares the flue with the fireplace?

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27 minutes ago, Tom King said:

Thanks a lot!   I see that the floor has been replaced at some point, but it would be kind of hard to mop that out between heating it with the fire, and putting food in it.  I think if you wanted to use it, some modern fire clay mortar to flush up the joints should work okay.

My mason said the same thing.  He said he would leave it how it is for now, and to leave his card to the buyers and mention that if they'd like to really bring it up to working order to call him and he will come flush everything up and get it a little bit nicer.  He has a lot of experience doing these original antique fireplaces and he said most people will use it once because it's a source of novelty but then realize what a PITA it is and never again.  But he said he worked for one family that turned theirs into a full on pizza oven that they fire up every friday.  Pretty cool.

It shares the flue with the fireplace.  All the flue passages had to be rebuilt from the top of the first floor through the (new) roof, which I'll explain in a forthcoming post.  

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10 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

 three PSLs...CMU pier

LVL I'm familiar with...but not these.  ?

I'm assuming you guys didn't get a foot of snow while the second floor was under construction...what would have happened if you had?

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4 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

One of his guys goes "what the hell man, when do we get brand new sweatshirts?"  Boss man goes "I'll get you one when you work as hard as Brian does." :)

LOL That's awesome.  It's good to establish that kind of relationship right out of the gate.

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